Emily Brown
The Australian man who won a staggering $165,000 while reenacting his earlier lottery win experienced his epic stroke of luck after just recently waking up from a coma.
Bill Morgan, who was living in a caravan park in Melbourne's outer suburbs at the time, was naturally over the moon in when he bought himself a scratch card in the late 90s and realised he'd won a Toyota Corolla worth $30,000 AUD ($19,800 USD).
His success caught the attention of a TV station in Melbourne, so producers reached out to Bill with the desire to share his story, and asked him to reenact his win with a new scratch card.
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Bill happily played along for the segment, but when he scratched off his new card he realised the Corolla wasn't the only thing he'd won.
Footage of the moment caught what happened as Bill scratched off the ticket.
“I just won $250,000 ($165,000 USD)," he said. "I'm not joking."
The video of Bill's incredible success has gone viral many times over the years, but his wins are only made all the more incredible when you learn that they came just months after he'd woken up from a coma.
About a year before his first win, in June 1998, Bill’s heart stopped for 14 minutes but miraculously, medics were able to revive him.
He wasn’t out of the woods just yet, though, as he ended up spending more than two weeks in a coma.
After a total of 15 days, Bill woke up and was able to start getting out and about, and it was after he settled back into his day-to-day life that he bought his first winning lottery ticket.
When he won a second time, Bill was so stunned that he blurted out: "I think I'll have another heart attack."
Bill reflected back on his success in an interview with the Daily Mail in 2020, saying: “It was an incredible time - 12 months before I had the win the heart stopped and my life was over for 14 minutes and 38 seconds.
“Every week I [bought] my Tattslotto and a $5 scratchie, I still do it now actually. So I buy this Scratchie I said out loud 'I think I've won a car' and sure enough I had.
“It wasn't that big of a deal to me until the newspapers and TV stations got wind of it. They thought it was a good luck story, so that's how it all started."
Bill revealed the people from the TV station thought he was joking when he first announced his second win, but that definitely wasn't the case.
“I said, ‘I'm not joking’ and all of a sudden it hit me like a tonne of bricks - I thought I was going to have another heart attack there and then,” he admitted.