A lucky couple in Maryland unknowingly bought two identical tickets in the same Powerball drawing and won $2 million.
“I saw that and went to the Powerball site,” he told Maryland Lottery officials. “I looked at the numbers and said, ‘No!’
An Annapolis man said the miraculous drawing happened after he visited the 7-Eleven on Bestgate Road and used the replay feature on the lottery terminal.
This man used this feature to scan old tickets, identify winners, and print new tickets with the same numbers, but he had no idea he would be sitting on a gold mine.
Some tickets had the same number, leaving duplicate tickets.
After hearing that 7-Eleven had sold two winning $1 million tickets, he immediately went back to check his stack.
The man first noticed that there were many winners of $4.
Continuing to scan, he was shocked when he won $1 million by scanning a ticket that matched the first five numbers of the drawing.
He recalled that he called his overjoyed wife and that the couple “had some crying moments,” but they were not prepared for what was to come.
“He joked about it,” his wife recalled with a smile. “He said, ‘I still have tickets left.’ What if he had a second million-dollar ticket?”
And before they knew it, they had another $1 million winning ticket in their hands.
“It was shocking. I never thought it would double,” said the father of two.
The couple said they plan to invest their winnings.
