'Overcome with joy': Toronto man who won $55M lottery jackpot still can't believe his luck
My parents made so many sacrifices for me to succeed. Now I can take care of them the way they deserve
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Nishit Parikh still can’t believe his lotto luck.
Parikh won a massive $55 million LOTTO MAX jackpot from the Aug. 5 draw and is still trying to comprehend the windfall.
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'Overcome with joy': Toronto man who won $55M lottery jackpot still can't believe his luck Back to video
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“I’m pretty sure I will be checking my bank account a lot to see that amount of money in there,” Parikh said in an OLG release. “It’s still so unbelievable.”
The 30-year-old project manager said he plays his own numbers that are comprised of significant family dates, but it was one of the additional auto-generated LOTTO MAX lines of numbers that increased the win significantly.
“I purchased this ticket about an hour before the draw closed. The next day I heard on the news that someone in Toronto had won and of course hoped it was me,” he said, while at the OLG Prize Centre in Toronto.
“When I checked my ticket on the OLG App, I saw the Big Winner screen, but didn’t believe it. I was looking at the zeroes, squinting my eyes to do a double take. I think my brain shutdown — I was trying to process what was happening.”
Then he went to ask his father to confirm what had happened.
“When I scanned it in front of him, he was so excited — he believed it right away. I still wasn’t convinced, so I had him scan the ticket on his phone in case it was a glitch on my end.”
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Parikh said he was “overcome with joy” when he realized what had happened.
“I thought to myself, now I can finally afford a house in Toronto. I told my close family on a video chat, and they guessed what happened. They were ecstatic for me.”
Parikh said he feels gratified knowing he can now take care of his family.
“My parents made so many sacrifices for me to succeed. Now I can take care of them the way they deserve,” he said.
He also plans to travel the world and make real estate investments.
The winning ticket was purchased at Petro Canada on Markham Rd. in Scarborough.
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