Lotto win late Christmas treat

A Wellington couple got a belated Christmas present on Saturday after discovering they had won a $402,678 prize in the Boxing Day Lotto draw.

For several weeks the winning ticket sat on a pile of papers, until one of the winners took it in for checking while buying a ticket for last weekend's Endless Summer promotion.

"I put it through the ticket scanner in the store but couldn't understand why it didn't tell me how much I had won," she said.

"So then I gave it to the operator to check and she told me I was a big winner though I still didn't really comprehend how big the prize was."

The woman and her partner have played Lotto since it began in 1987 and were always confident of winning a big prize one day.

"It's come at a very good time for us, my husband was made redundant last year and it's been a struggle."