(UPI) Winning the lottery is already a difficult way to beat the odds, but some players end up needing an extra dose of luck when their winning tickets end up misplaced, misread or thrown in the trash.

Lottery expert Brett Jacobson said billions of dollars in lottery winnings go unclaimed each year, with a total $2.89 billion in prizes unclaimed in the 12-month period ending in June 2017. He said tickets are often misread, and players often don't completely understand the rules of the games they are playing.

Here are five stories of lottery players who narrowly evaded becoming part of a similar statistic:

1. Left behind at the store

A 70-year-old Baltimore, Md., woman told Maryland Lottery officials she bought a ticket for virtual horse racing game Racetrax at the Ravenwood Shopping Center in Towson and ended up winning $12,327 on her two-draw Superfecta wager. The woman said she excitedly took her ticket to the clerk to confirm her prize.

The winner said it wasn't until she was driving away from the shopping center and telling her partner about her win that she realized the ticket had been left behind at the counter. Her partner pulled a U-turn in the road and they returned to the store, where the clerk reunited the woman with her missing ticket.

2. Tossed in the back of a truck

Tennessee Lottery player Sean Winn of Greenville, Ky., tossed a Gigantic Jumbo Bucks scratch-off ticket into the back of his truck when he determined it wasn't a winner.

Winn had intended to throw the ticket away with the trash, but decided to enter it in a second-chance promotion. The decision turned out to be fortuitous, as the second chance game informed him that his ticket wasn't eligible for the promotion -- it was a $4 million winner.

3. One night in the trash

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