Luck runs out: Man loses $92K in winning lottery tickets
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) – The same lucky lottery numbers, 7-1-5, that won a Florida man tens of thousands of dollars over the years banked him another $92,000 payout last month. And then his luck ran out: the 184 winning tickets, each worth $500, were nowhere to be found.
Walid Aboroomi searched high and low, even calling his garbage hauler to see if he might try to salvage the Florida Cash 3 tickets. (He couldn’t – his trash is taken to an incinerator.)
“Finally, I gave up. I was crying, crying like a baby,” said the 50-year-old man.
Aboroomi told The Tampa Tribune he has a ticket from the lottery machine showing 184 tickets were sold on May 28. But lottery officials told him he must have the tickets to get the cash.
Aboroomi has had a lucky streak over the years, winning well over $1.5 million from various lottery games. In fall 2004, he won $500,000 in a scratch-off jackpot. The next year, he won $1 million playing the Virginia Million Dollar Madness scratch game. He later won $71,000 in the Virginia Pick 3 with his lucky numbers, and another $100,000 with those same numbers in 2007.
“Yeah,” Aboroomi said, “I’m not hungry.”
His latest luck with 7-1-5 came May 28, when he said he noticed the time: 7:15 p.m. A license plate in the parking lot had the number 715. Incidentally, that’s his birthday: July 15.
“Everything was 715,” said Aboroomi, who emigrated from Israel 27 years ago. “It was blowing my brain.”