Unlucky Lottery Winner Drowns, Winning Ticket Found In His Wallet After Death

A man who had a winning lottery ticket was reported dead on Friday, Sept. 24, in what many police officers are suspecting to be an accidental drowning after his boat met a mishap in the water.

Gregory Jarvis, a 57-year-old man residing in Michigan, was found dead in a Caseville, Michigan beach on early Friday with a winning Club Keno ticket still in his pocket. He was found close to an unsupervised boat that is said to belong to him, according to the New York Post.

“We are thinking that he was tying up his boat, slipped and fell, hit his head, and that’s where he ended up in the water. No foul play suspected,” Police Chief Kyle Romzek told the media.

Jarvis was a regular at the Blue Water Inn in Caseville, where he won the ticket on Sept. 13. He was last seen on Sept. 19 at the Blue Water Inn in a celebratory mood and buying people multiple rounds of drinks in spite of him not cashing in the lucky ticket yet, according to the ABC 12 News.

“He couldn’t cash it because he didn’t have a Social Security card at all, it wasn’t any good, so he applied for a new one,” Blue Water Inn owner Dawn Talaski said.

“Very nice guy, he was here every day,” Talaski said about Jarvis. “Somebody said someone just won The Jack and he said, ‘Great,’ and someone asked him, ‘Was it you?’ and it was, so he was super excited.”

Jarvis went missing around Sept. 19, when Talaski first noticed that the middle-aged man had yet to return. Being a regular of the Blue Water Inn’s bar, Talaski was concerned when his boss came in looking for Jarvis, also noting that he hadn't shown up to work the past week.

“Sometimes he’s up north working, he wasn’t here all week and we thought, something is wrong,” she said.

Talaski said that Jarvis was planning on using the ticket to visit his family in North Carolina. The winning ticket has now been given to relatives of Jarvis in the area.

The Michigan Lottery Commission requires winners of prizes worth more than $600 to present photo identification and their Social Security card before any of their winnings can be claimed.