You might not believe how lucky Russell Menser is. The farmer from Whiteville, North Carolina won a million bucks on a Powerball ticket that he wound up buying – but was originally printed up for someone else. Every ticket has the same shot at becoming a winner, but Menser’s story is just the latest chapter in big lottery wins that almost never happened.
Several strokes of good fortune led to Menser’s $1 million win. First, the clerk at the Time Saver Food Store in Whiteville offered him an already-printed Powerball ticket that, for whatever reason, another customer decided they did not want to buy. Next, the ticket that he bought turned out to match all five white balls – something that has happened quite a few times for North Carolina players, but certainly doesn’t happen every day. Until he got to lottery headquarters to claim his prize, Menser thought he had won maybe $3,000. Which brings us to the third element of luck in his story: had he bought a $1 ticket, the most a five white ball match would have won is $200,000 – not bad, right? But since it was a $2 Power Play ticket, the match made Menser an automatic $1 million winner.
Just yesterday, another winner in New York won $1 million almost the same way as our winner in here in North Carolina. Convenience store owner Charanjit Kaur decided to buy a Megaplied Mega Millions ticket after a customer declined to buy it because they did not want to Megaply. The ticket had five sets of Megaplied numbers, so it cost $10 instead of $5. “I'm so happy, the whole family was dancing,” Kaur was quoted as saying, according to The Times-Herald Record.
Last, but certainly not least, is the story from last year about the $128 million Powerball jackpot winner whose ticket was printed by accident on Christmas Eve. Rob Anderson, an auto worker from central Kentucky, won the largest Powerball jackpot in that state’s history after a misunderstanding about how he wanted to get his tickets. “The clerk ran the $3 Quick Pick but he put it all on one ticket, and I was like, doggone it, I needed three separate tickets,” Anderson was quoted as saying by the Associated Press. Anderson bought three individual Powerball tickets to give as gifts, but also kept the misprinted ticket that turned out to be the jackpot winner.
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