Maryland Man Wins $1 Million… Twice

An inadvertent purchase gave a Maryland man two $1 million winning tickets in April 1 drawing…and this wasn’t a prank.

An Anne Arundel County “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.

According to the Maryland Lottery, “Later in the day on April 2, they found out that they were holding both of those lucky tickets.” Full story below by MD Lottery:

The husband, who enjoys playing Powerball, Mega Millions, FAST PLAY and scratch-offs, said he has a few Powerballtickets 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 7-Eleven store #33378 in Annapolis to try his luck. He likes to use the 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 Powerballsite,” 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.”

For selling two $1 million-winning Powerball tickets, the lucky 7-Eleven #33378 at 710 Bestgate Road in Annapolis earns a combined $5,000 bonus from the Lottery — $2,500 for each ticket.

No one has hit the Powerball jackpot since Jan. 1, when a $842.4 million winning ticket was sold in Michigan. Maryland has now sold six $1 million winning tickets in 2024, five of which have come during the current jackpot roll, which started on Jan. 2. The other $1 million prize was won in the Jan. 1 drawing. 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).