BC miner strikes it rich with $16-million lottery win

ATLIN (NEWS1130) - When Steve Murphy of Northern BC checked his lottery ticket, he thought he won $16,000. But he got it wrong; it was actually $16 million!

Murphy is a miner from Atlin, a town of about 500 people. It's about as far north as you can get in BC.

He says it only took about five minutes for everyone in Atlin to hear the big news. His nine-year-old son, on the other hand, lives in Costa Rica and hasn't heard yet. Murphy is still working on exactly how he'll tell him. "Daddy's rich! Haha... I'm not sure."

Murphy doesn't regularly play the lottery, but like anyone, he wasn't expecting to hit the jackpot. "I was waiting for a rejection when I checked the ticket!"

He hasn't decided how to spend his new fortune yet. "The first step is to take a couple of weeks off and really think about this. I gotta really get my mind around how much money this is. I really have to think about what I'm going to do with it."