BALTIMORE, MD—A Maryland “Power Couple” got quite the surprise on April 2, when they learned one of their favorite lottery retailers had sold not one but two $1 million winning Powerball tickets in the April 1 drawing.
But a much bigger surprise was yet to come.
Later in the day on April 2, they found out that they were holding both of those lucky tickets.
The husband, who enjoys playing Powerball, Mega Millions, FAST PLAY, and scratch-offs, said he has a few Powerball tickets with numbers he selected that he likes to replay when there’s a big jackpot.
“I only play when it’s over a billion dollars,” he said.
On Monday, when the jackpot rose to $1 billion for the April 1 drawing, he grabbed a number of his tickets from prior drawings and visited the 7-Eleven store located at 710 Bestgate Road in Annapolis to try his luck. He likes to use the Maryland Lottery terminal’s “replay” feature, which enables players to quickly scan an older ticket in order to print out a new one with the same set of numbers.
What he didn’t realize was that his stack of tickets included a few duplicated tickets from prior drawings. He scanned all the tickets in his stack to buy tickets for the April 1 Powerball drawing and headed home.
The next day, while his wife was out, the Annapolis resident started checking his tickets. He first saw that he had four winning Powerball tickets worth $4 each, which appeared to be duplicates. And then he came across a ticket with a very familiar set of numbers that he has played previously: 19, 24, 40, 42, 56, and the Powerball 13.
“I looked at it and I went to the Powerball site,” he recalled. “I saw the numbers and I said, ‘No!’”
The ticket matched the first five numbers in the April 1 drawing, but did not match the winning Powerball. He had missed the jackpot by one number! The excited husband called his wife, telling her happily, “We won $1 million!” When she arrived home, the celebration began.
“We had our crying moment,” he recalled. “Twenty minutes after that, when I put the ticket down, I went back to the other tickets.”
And that’s when he realized that he had inadvertently purchased two tickets with that same set of numbers. He also knew the retailer had sold not one but two $1 million winning tickets.
“He joked about it,” his wife recalled with a smile. “He said, ‘I still have tickets to go through. What if I have the second million-dollar ticket?”
Minutes later, the “Power Couple” was celebrating again.
“It was mind blowing,” the father of two said. “I had no idea I doubled it.”
They plan to invest the prize money. “I never thought I’d be here,” the happy husband said while seated in the Lottery Winner’s Circle room on April 3. “It’s still surreal.”
No one has hit the Powerball jackpot since Jan. 1, when a $842.4 million winning ticket was sold in Michigan. The estimated jackpot annuity for the Saturday, April 6 drawing is $1.23 billion with an estimated cash value of $595.1 million (before taxes).
Photo via the Maryland Lottery
