50 Year old Ghanaian Cleaner Wins $16m Lottery

A 50-year-old Ghanaian who works as a cleaner in Toronto is now a multimillionaire.

John Sarkodie Addo made 16.6 million dollars overnight by winning the top prize in the Lotto Max drawn on April 15.

The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation says John Addo checked his ticket Saturday at a local store and found he had one of the three winning tickets in Friday's 50 million dollar draw.

Mr. Addo relocated to Canada 20 years ago, and has been working seven days a week for an industrial cleaning company to make ends meet.



He says his friends teased him about his weekly ticket purchase, but he always believed he would win one day. "My coworkers would often tease me about my weekly ticket purchase, but I had faith I was going to win," said Addo. "When it really happened, I couldn't stop crying.”

He plans to buy a home and visit his family in Ghana with his winnings, and also wants to invest some of the money. "I will definitely go back and visit my family now,” he said Tuesday at the OLG prize centre. “My first priority though will be to buy a home of my own and invest my money properly."

Mr. Addo says he couldn't stop crying when he found out that he had won. "I immediately went straight home and lay down for a while to think about it," he said in a statement released by the OLG on Tuesday. "I could never have imagined winning this much money in my life.