$1 Million lottery winners failed to do one essential thing - and lost every cent

Erick Onyango and Salvatore Cambria, both of Suffern, Rockland County are suing the New Jersey Lottery.

Imagine realizing that you'd bought a lottery ticket worth $1 million—and that you'd thrown it away.

It's a reminder to all Silverites that you should treat every ticket as a winner until the lotto machine tells you it's not.

Two New York men say they threw the winning tickets away—and that it was New Jersey's fault.

The two friends bought three Powerball tickets from a Mahwah, New Jersey 7-Eleven last year.

The Powerball tickets were bought at this New Jersey 7-Eleven.

Salvatore Cambria and Erik Onyango are suing the New Jersey Lottery Commission, alleging that it failed to update its website with the winning numbers in a timely fashion on March 23 last year.

Onyango said he checked the winning numbers on his phone 15 minutes after the drawing and was convinced they didn’t have a winner.

But it turned out the numbers Onyango was reading were from the previous Powerball drawing.

"It was on an iPhone," said Cambria. "The dates are so small."

Days later, when Onyango said he realized he bought a winning ticket that matched five numbers and was worth $1 million, the ticket was already buried in a garbage dump.

When the pair checked their tickets against the website, they thought they'd lost, and threw out their winning ticket.

They eventually realized their mistake, but lottery officials told them that without a ticket, they were out of luck, according to their attorney.

The men say they can 'prove' they bought the ticket, because they bought three tickets with consecutive numbers. Cambria took the middle ticket, which would turn out to be the winner, and discarded it, but Onyango still has the other two.

The lottery isn't commenting, and it's our opinion these players won't see their 'win' any time soon. Remember to get an official check from the lottery store before you ditch the tickets.