# He Won 500,000 Dollars on a Scratch Card, Bought Another One, and Won Again > A player in Toledo took the top prize on a 50 dollar ticket on 27 July, then took 25,000 dollars more on the next one. The second win is the part worth thinking about. - Source: France 247 - Canonical URL: https://france247.news/article/ohio-scratch-ticket-double-win-toledo - Author: Margot Lefevre - Section: Lifestyle - Published: 2026-08-03T12:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-03T12:00:00.000Z - Tags: Lottery, Ohio, Odds, Taxes --- A man walked into a shop in Toledo, Ohio on 27 July, bought a scratch card called Millionaire Blowout at 50 dollars a ticket, and won the top prize of 500,000 dollars. He was offered the money either as a single payment or as 40,000 dollars a year for 25 years, and took it in one go. Then he bought a second ticket at the same counter and won 25,000 dollars on that one as well. The store manager will collect a retailer bonus from the state lottery for having sold the winning tickets, and told reporters this was a win for everybody and proof that people can win in Toledo. The player, for his part, is reported to have extended a holiday and to be considering a car and a share of the money for his children. The second ticket is the interesting part, and not for the reason it first appears. Scratch cards have no memory. Every ticket in a print run has a prize or does not have one before it is ever bought, and the chance of the next card in the stack paying out is exactly what it was before he scratched the first. Buying again immediately after a jackpot is the gambler's fallacy running in reverse, the sense of being on a streak, and it happened to be rewarded. Enough people do it every day that some of them are always going to win twice. The payout choice was the genuine decision, and taking the lump sum is defensible. Twenty-five annual payments of 40,000 dollars come to a million on paper, twice the headline figure, but they arrive in a currency that will be worth steadily less and cannot be invested until they land. Whether the lump sum wins depends on what return the money earns and what inflation does over a quarter of a century. What it certainly does is remove the risk of an annuity outliving the recipient's interest in it. One figure being repeated about this story deserves a caution. It has been reported that American lottery prizes are taxed at 26.75 percent, leaving 366,250 dollars and 18,312.50 dollars from the two tickets. That number describes withholding rather than tax. The federal government withholds a flat rate at source and the state withholds its own share on top, but the final liability is settled against the winner's total income for the year at that year's rates, and a large prize pushes the recipient into the top federal bracket. The real bill on a prize this size is normally higher than the amount held back, and the difference is due the following April. None of which is an argument against the ticket that won. It is an argument about the ones bought after it, and about arithmetic that is easier to do before the money arrives than after. --- Originally published by France 247. Free to cite with attribution and a link to https://france247.news/article/ohio-scratch-ticket-double-win-toledo.