A Ruapehu man was completely oblivious that he had become a millionaire until two months later when he received the call of a lifetime.
On September 14, the man, who wishes to remain anonymous, logged into his MyLotto account to grab a ticket before the draw that night.
However, that was the last time he logged in until he received a call from Lotto NZ almost two months later.
"I usually buy my ticket from my local store - I like to support them, but that night I had left it too late to get there, so I quickly logged in and bought my ticket online," the man said in a statement.
"I don't usually use MyLotto, so I completely forgot that I had a ticket on there. I probably wouldn't have checked it till the next time I left it too late to get to the shop."
He said he was confused when he got a call from Lotto NZ asking if he has checked his online ticket recently.
"After the call, I began to think 'surely they wouldn't call me unless I'd won a prize and they wouldn't bother if it was only a few hundred dollars'," he said.
After arriving home from a long day, it wasn't until the next morning he remembered the phone call.
"I logged into my account and the virtual draw started to play... One number circled, then two, three, four, and before I knew it the winning music played, and my ticket had a rather large figure at the top of it," he said.
"I had to refocus my glasses. I read the number as $1 million, and my heart skipped a beat - I was absolutely ecstatic!"
He called Lotto NZ back to confirm it was correct.
"I don't think I really believed it, so I called the woman I had spoken to the day before. When she answered I told her who I was, and she laughed and said 'ahh yes, I've been waiting for you to call, how are you feeling?'" he said. "That's when I knew it was real."
The man said he is waiting for the right moment to tell his partner the good news.
"She's been working incredibly hard, so I think I'm going to whisk her away to Taupō for a nice weekend away and some spa treatments," he said.
The man is planning to use his winnings to travel overseas and buy some new toys.
Lotto NZ corporate communications manager Sarah McCormack said they want winners to experience the thrill of checking their ticket and finding out the result themselves but they also want to make sure they claim their prize.
"So once two months had gone by without our winner claiming, we thought it was time to get in contact - and what better time to find out you're a millionaire than with Christmas just around the corner."
