Lottery winner found drowned with $45,000 winning ticket still in his wallet

The lottery ticket has been passed on to his relatives

A man from Michigan has been found dead on a private beach with a winning lottery ticket still in his wallet. Authorities say that Gregory Jarvis, who was 57, had won $45,000 playing the state’s Club Keno game at the Blue Water Inn on September 13. He was found dead on a beach in Caseville, along the Saginaw Bay, last Friday (September 24), a week and half after he'd won the jackpot. Despite winning the money on when he played the Club Keno add-on game 'The Jack', Jarvis was unable to cash-in the ticket because he didn't have a Social Security card. He applied for a new card and according to the owner of the inn, Dawn Talaski, he had plans to use the money to go and visit his family. Jarvis returned to the bar on September 19 to buy a round of celebratory drinks but when he didn't turn up the next day Talaski grew concerned. She said: "He wasn’t here all week and we thought, something is wrong." On September 24, a Caseville resident called police because a body had washed ashore his private beach. Police confirmed that the body was that of Jarvis. The police chief in Caseville said that they had looked into any suspicious circumstances surrounding his death because of the lottery win but that he had died in a tragic accident. Kyle Romzek said: "We are thinking that he was tying up his boat, slipped and fell, hit his head, and that’s where he ended up in the water, no foul play suspected. "We were concerned about it (the lottery win) but after the autopsy, and we interviewed people at the bar, he was well-liked around here, he was nice guy, that took it off the table." The winning ticket has been passed on to his relatives. Remembering one of the last times she saw Jarvis, Talaski told ABC12: "Somebody said someone just won The Jack and he said, 'Great,' and someone asked him, 'Was it you?' and it was.

"He was super excited. Very nice guy, he was here everyday.

"He was planning to take that money and go see his sister and his dad in North Carolina."

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