A store owner was overjoyed to find out that she would be getting a $1 million prize for selling the winning ticket of the Mega Millions lottery for Tuesday's $636 million jackpot, Yahoo News reported.
Young Soo Lee was informed about the victory by a CNN reporter for selling one of the two winning Mega Million lottery ticket on Tuesday.
"Now you know by selling the winning ticket there's also prize money for you," CNN's Martin Savidge told Lee, the owner of the Gateway newsstand in Buckhead, Ga., just north of Atlanta.
"I know, but I don't know how much," she replied. "Long time ago, I heard its $25,000."
"Let me tell you, it's a lot more than $25,000," Savidge said. "It's about $1 million that you get."
"Really?" she gasped, clutching her chest. "Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! I never had so much money!"
But as it turns out, Lee won't be getting the $1 million prize. In fact, she won't be getting anything at all for selling the winning ticket, Yahoo News reported. While the store owner in California who sold the other winning ticket will be getting a $1 million bonus, Lee's Georgian store will not be getting the same treatment. Georgia lottery rules provide no retailer payout, spokeswoman Tandi Reddick said.
Retailers get a flat 6 percent commission on the sales of the $1 tickets themselves, but no bonus for a winning ticket, she said. Lee told NBC that she was "a little mad" after learning that she wasn't getting the bonus.
The other winning ticket was sold at Jenny's Gift Shop in San Jose, Calif., whose owner, Thuy Nguyen, a 37-year-old Vietnamese man and father of three, bought the store four months ago, lottery officials said. Per California rules, Nguyen will receive a $1 million bonus.
According to Yahoo News, the $636 million jackpot was the second-largest in U.S. lottery history. The largest, a $656 million prize, was split by three winning tickets in March 2012.
The odds of winning Tuesday's jackpot were 1 in 259 million, according to Mega Millions.
