Dad wins £1m after double checking lottery ticket left in unlocked car for four months

Independent

27-03-2025

A lottery winner discovered he had won £1 million four months after the draw - after checking a ticket he had left in his car.
Darren Burfitt happened to check his lucky ticket one Sunday morning after his four-year-old son asked for a packet of crisps from the car.
The 44-year-old, from Swansea, had kept several tickets lying in the central console of his car for four months, but decided to double check his numbers after spotting an appeal to find a missing winner.
'I had a few tickets in the central console of my car – it is where I always keep them for safety, and I just hadn't got round to checking them,' the green-keeper at Langland Bay Golf Club said.
'When my son asked for a packet of crisps I didn't want to open a new bag – we often end up with half open bags of crisps and I knew there was a packet which he hadn't finished in the car so I said I would pop out and get this one for him.
'I decided to grab my National Lottery tickets at the same time, went back into the house and started to scan each one on The National Lottery app on my phone.'
The father-of-two continued, 'One of the tickets was particularly creased so I thought I would leave that one until the end. It was so crumpled it wouldn't scan, so I had to bring up the draw details and read the results.
'I couldn't quite believe it when I did… Infact, I still cannot believe it now. I just kept looking at the date and then the matching EuroMillions Millionaire Maker code – and then the date and the code again - I just could not comprehend what I was seeing.'
Darren had left the ticket in his grey Citroen DS4, which he'd left unlocked every day for the last 4 months.
'My car is honestly a shed on wheels, held together with mud. It has almost no value, so I never bother to lock it. I dread to think what could have happened to that winning ticket,' he said.
He had bought the ticket from a Morrisons with his family on the way to a caravan holiday. After he realised he had won, he called his wife, Gemma, a teaching assistant, to tell her the news.
The couple, who also have a six-year-old daughter, are now planning their future and have their sights set on buying their first home together.
Gemma, 34, said, 'I just could never imagine having this much money – it is an unreal feeling.
'I literally have to keep pinching myself – thinking it is a dream which I will wake up from. We love our lives and enjoy great caravan holidays but this just takes things to another level and allows us to do even more as a family. It changes everything and we can finally buy a home of our own. It is going to give us so much security for our future and our children's future.'