The ticket was not a winner.
"I just feel very disrespected about it coming from the New York State Lottery. I should be having fun playing the lottery, not feel offended while playing it," Lynough told the Elmira Star Gazette. "At first, I thought someone was playing a trick on me with one of those fake lottery tickets, but I guess it was real."
Chemung County Sheriff Christopher Moss said investigators looked into whether the ticket had been tampered with at the request of Homestead Inn owner Sara Scheepsma.
"It doesn't look like the ticket's been tampered with at all," he said. "Once we found it wasn't fraudulent, it's not really a law enforcement matter."
The New York State Gaming Commission said the word selection was completely random and there was a 1 in 900 million chance of the words appearing in that order -- meaning players would have a better chance of winning the Powerball or Mega Millions drawings than finding the phrase.
"As soon as the ticket was brought to our attention, we immediately contacted the ticket printing vendor (IGT) to remove the word 'trash' from being a possible result for any future game. We apologize to anyone who was offended by this unfortunate result," the gaming commission said in a statement.
Lynough said he finds the coincidence too unlikely to believe.
"I personally don't think it was random," he said. "If it was random, it would have showed up somewhere else. It wouldn't have shown up in Elmira."
