If you were anywhere near a convenience store during the last few weeks, you probably waited in line for a few minutes to purchase your beers, cigarettes, sodas or whatever you needed. Did you contribute to the long lines? Inundated by customers demanding lottery tickets, convenience store clerks watched thousands of Washingtonians pencil their lottery numbers in boxes. A few days before the March 30, 2012 drawing, the Mega Millions jackpot reached a record of $656 million dollars. We learned the identities of all three winners today – three Maryland public school employees who pooled their money together to buy their tickets.
However, before we learned the identities of the lucky winners, newspapers and other media outlets falsely reported the winner as Chris Cunningham.
As reported by “The Roanoke Times” on April 1, 2012, Virginia Tech senior Chris Cunningham made social media headlines after falsely claiming he won the historical Mega Millions jackpot. After posting his claims on Twitter, Pinterest and other social media sites, Cunningham became a social media star for the next well, few minutes. According to the newspaper, the Virginia Tech senior and two of his close friends made up the story to generate a Killa J mixed tape going so far as Photo shopping images of them holding a winning ticket.
Was it worth it? Chris Cunningham doesn’t face any legal charges – yet. In fact, he may benefit from his false claims. He received a few marriage proposals and dozens of high profile interview requests following his false claims.
