Metro

NYC deli sells $1 million lottery ticket after clerk initially thought it was only worth $10K: ‘Is this real or a dream’

The zeroes just kept adding up.

A clerk at an Upper East Side deli sold a $1 million lottery ticket to a mystery woman over the weekend — although both were in disbelief and assumed they had misread the ticket.  

Peoples Place Gourmet Deli worker Maeen Ghazi told The Post Thursday there were so many zeroes on the receipt he initially believed the winning lotto ticket was worth $10,000, then suspected $100,000 before he read it correctly when the woman visited the store Monday.  

The shop sold a $1 million lotto ticket. Robert Miller
“When I saw the receipt I thought it was $10,000 or $100,000,” Peoples Place Gourmet Deli worker Maeen Ghazi told The Post. Robert Miller

“She asked me ‘Did anybody win the jackpot? I tell her ‘No,’” Ghazi, 35, explained.

“She said ‘OK, I’ll check my ticket.’ Then she said ‘Oh, I won big money, can you see how much?’”

“When I saw the receipt I thought it was $10,000 or $100,000,” Ghazi continued.

“I asked her ‘How much is this?’ She said ‘1 million.’ She was shocked. She was so shocked.”

“She asked ‘Is this real or a dream,’” the bodega worker recalled, describing the customer as a “tall lady, handsome, quiet, maybe 50.”

The grand total was $1,000,004 – a second-prize ticket connected to the March 9 Powerball drawing.

Tara Cooley bought a Powerball ticket Thursday. Robert Miller

A slew of customers are now stopping by the convenience store on Second Avenue between East 72nd and East 73rd streets for a chance of also getting lucky.

No one has won the top Powerball prize yet following a pair of drawings that happened Monday and Wednesday nights.

The next drawing is scheduled for Saturday and is worth $600 million.

Queens resident Sophia Isaac congratulated Ghazi on the deli’s big win, and then told him, “You better make me a winner tomorrow,” referring to a $792 million Mega Million drawing set for Friday.

“My son tells me to stop playing but all it takes is $3 and a dream,” she told The Post.

Jeff Sanders is still holding out hope he’s a lucky winner. Robert Miller

Upper East Side local Jeff Sanders, 81, stopped by Peoples Place to buy a $2 Mega Million automated quick pick. When he was told about the recent $1 million prize, he said, “That’s what I need right now, believe me. But I’d take $200,000.”

“I’ve been buying lottery tickets for about 50 years,” he said.

He admitted, however, that he’s won “nuthin.”

The deli sold a winning ticket worth $7,500 and another ticket worth $2,000 in January.

Ghazi said she doesn’t think the woman who won last weekend has cashed out yet.

“She told me ‘I’ll come back and take care of you,’” he said.

“We’ll see.”