In July 2011, Sharon Jones, a woman from Blytheville, Arkansas, found a discarded pile of lottery tickets in a trash bin at a local gas station. To her surprise, one of the tickets was worth a $1 million jackpot. She successfully claimed the prize from the lottery company. However, Lisa Petrich, the female manager of the gas station, took her to court, claiming that the $1 million should belong to her. On the last day of winter break, she left with an obsession. In July 2011, as usual, Jones picked up a bunch of lottery tickets from the trash can outside a local gas station convenience store and took them home. After checking the numbers on the tickets online with her husband, they discovered that one of the "Diamond Dazzler" scratch-off tickets they had picked up from the trash was worth a $1 million jackpot.
According to reports, Sharon Jones and her husband have long had the habit of searching through trash bins for old lottery tickets, hoping to find some "unexpected wealth" among the discarded tickets, but luck had never been on their side until now.
On January 25th, the White County Circuit Court in Arkansas officially began hearing this bizarre case that shocked the entire nation. Jones' lawyer stated: "That lottery ticket is abandoned property. Once someone abandons it, it belongs to whoever finds it first."
Recently, a third woman has joined the lawsuit - a woman named Sharon Duncan claims that she was the original purchaser of the winning lottery ticket and the one who threw it into the trash. Duncan argues that since she originally spent $20 on the lottery ticket, she should be the rightful owner of the $1 million prize.