Xue Lee with his check where he won with a losing ticket. PHOTO: California Lottery

In September Xue Lee received an email from the California Lottery about his 2nd Chance account.

Lee didn’t think much of the email. In fact he actually deleted it without reading it, thinking it was just spam.

Days went by as the email got buried further and further into the abyss of his trash folder. But that email remained stuck in the back of Lee’s mind - almost like it was begging him to open it up and read it.

Unfortunately for Lee he couldn’t find the deleted email, but he couldn’t stop thinking that maybe it contained something important.

So he decided he should probably log into his 2nd Chance account to make sure. That’s when he realized he almost made a costly mistake. 

Lee’s $10 California Lucky Life scratch-off ticket was drawn to win the end-of-game top prize, which in this case is $5,000 a week for 25 years – or $6.5 million.

Instead of taking weekly payments, Lee opted for the lump sum payment which will be a whopping $3.75 million!

Lee said he plans to invest a large chunk of his money, but he also plans on using some of it to buy a house and maybe take a vacation to Hawaii with his girlfriend.