2. Woman Throws Away $1 Million Lottery Ticket



This is Sharon Jones, who "found" the ticket.
 
Here's a strange story for our Financial Blunder list, and one that has a happy ending. Sharon Duncan purchased a Diamond Dazzler lottery ticket at the Super 1 Stop in the tiny town of Beeb, Arkansas in July 2011. When she scanned it, it did not come up as a winner, and she tossed it in the bin below. Along came Sharon Jones, who combed through the trash, found the discarded ticket, and discovered that it was indeed a $1 million dollar winner. Elated, Jones spent a lot of the money on herself and her children, only to be brought to court by the convenience store manager, who claimed Jones took the ticket from the bin that had a sign saying “Do Not Take.” When Duncan got wind of it, she joined the suit, claiming that she was misled by the scanner reading and deserved the winnings. A judge and jury debated the matter and returned the decision in Duncan's favor, meaning that Jones would have to return the money she spent. Jones appealed, but before the case could go back to the courts the parties settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.

4. Fed Spends $120 Million Due to a Printing Glitch



Talk about a printer jam; It turns out there was a problem with the new $100 bills that were being printed by the US Treasury... a $120 million dollar problem. Originally scheduled to be issued in 2011, these new high-security C-Notes were announced with big fanfare. However, as the the first billion notes rolled off the presses, it was discovered that “sporadic creasing of the paper” had caused a small sliver on some of the bills to be printed incorrectly. This “glitch” caused a 2-year delay in the release of the new bills as they sorted the good from the bad, costing $120 million extra... at the US taxpayers' expense, of course!

6. Bank of America Glitch Allows a Gambler to Withdraw (and Lose) $1.5 Million



In a situation similar to a drug addict being allowed unlimited access to crack cocaine, retired Flint Michigan autoworker Ronald Paige discovered that he was able to withdraw vast sums of money from Bank of America ATMs. For 14 days, Paige was able to withdraw - and subsequently gamble away - the bank's money due to a “glitch” in their ATMs at several casinos in the area. During his almost non-stop spree (he went 36 hours without sleep) he had withdrawn $1,543,100. Paige was “completely apologetic.” Nonetheless, he was sentenced to 15 days in prison and ordered to repay the $1.5 million in installments from his $2000 monthly pension.

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