Woman Claims She Accidentally Gave Away Winning Lottery Ticket

A California woman claims she accidentally gave away a winning lottery ticket worth $260,000 and now wants it back. The woman, Emily Leach, previously won $1 million on a lottery ticket in January, the San Jose Mercury News reported.

Since winning her million, Leach has been in the habit of giving away money to random people and when she stopped into a convenience store to turn in scratch-off cards she gave $100 to a man in line behind her, the Mercury News reported. She also gave him a Mega Millions ticket she had just bought that turned out to be worth $260,000.

Leach said it was an accident, the paper reported.

"That's my ticket," Leach told the Mercury News. "He knows it's my ticket. I feel like I'm going to come off as a huge, huge bitch if I say, 'You need to give me my ticket back.' "

Regardless of how it looks, she wants it back and the state lottery commission's security department is investigating and will review store video.

"She said she had the ticket in her hand and maybe it got mixed in with the money she gave this person," Alex Traverso, a spokesman for the lottery commission, told the Mercury News. "They're going to look at the video and see if she's the one actually buying the ticket. If no one else is in the picture, that puts things firmly in her favor."