If you play the lottery, you probably always hope you’ll win but never really expect to pick a multi-million dollar ticket. However, someone will end up winning, and you never know if it’s going to be you or not.

Winning a multi-million dollar prize can be life-changing, especially if you manage the money correctly. You don’t want to blow it all in a year. Instead, you could invest it, pay off your mortgage or buy a house if you’re renting. Travel and enjoy doing things you’ve never been able to afford to do before.

More heartbreaking than not winning the lottery would be winning but not finding out until it was too late. That almost happened to a woman from Michigan.

A 55-year-old woman named Laura Spears went online and bought a Mega Millions lottery ticket. The five white balls that were drawn on New Year’s Eve were 02-05-30-46-61, the same numbers Spears had picked on the lottery ticket. Unfortunately, she didn’t find out she had won right away since the email notifying her that she was a winner ended up in her email’s spam folder.

Watch the video below to find out why Spears happened to check her spam folder and what she plans to do with the money.

According to MiLotteryConnect, by picking the correct numbers, Spears’ lottery ticket was worth $1 million, but she ended up winning $3 million thanks to Megaplier.

Spears told MiLotteryConnect, “I saw an ad on Facebook that the Mega Millions jackpot was getting pretty high, so I got on my account and bought a ticket.” The account she’s talking about is her account at MichiganLottery.com. 

A few days later, Spears was having trouble finding an email from someone, so she checked her spam folder and saw the email from the Lottery. She explained, “That’s when I saw an email from the Lottery saying I had won a prize. I couldn’t believe what I was reading, so I logged in to my Lottery account to confirm the message in the email. It’s all still so shocking to me that I really won $3 million!”

Just in case she ever happens to win the Lottery again, Spears added the Michigan Lottery to her safe email list so that it doesn’t end up in her spam folder again.

If you play the lottery or enter any other type of contest, maybe it’s time to check that spam folder!

How often do you check your spam folder? Have you ever found an important email in your spam folder?