 A lucky Baltimore man won $600,000 with multiple winning tickets in the Jan. 30 Bonus Match 5 drawing. |
Plays same lucky numbers on multiple tickets to win top prize
Well, it’s hard to believe – even for our winner – but it’s true! A Baltimore man bought not one, not two, but multiple winning Bonus Match 5 tickets at a Maryland Lottery retailer in Dundalk only hours before the Jan. 30 drawing. He walks away with a $600,000 prize!
“You can’t believe how I’m feeling right now,” he said. “It was a fluke. I came this close to not playing.”
The lucky retiree is a loyal player with several scratch-off and Bonus Match 5 wins to his name. He picks his own numbers when playing Bonus Match 5 and includes the numbers 2 and 11 for significant birthdays.
“The rest are random,” he said. “I picked them out of the air.”
The 67-year-old often plays the same numbers on multiple tickets for one drawing, which is a great strategy under ordinary circumstances when a player matches two or three winning numbers on multiple tickets. Regular Bonus Match 5 top-prize wins are worth $50,000. However, as the Lottery states on its website, “In the unlikely event more than 12 game boards correctly match five of five winning numbers in a single drawing, each game board matching five of five winning numbers will receive an equal share of the $600,000 pool.”
The lucky man, who is retired after more than 40 years in the automotive industry, is such a regular at the Soda Pop Shop located at 7715 Westfield Road in Dundalk that he got a call after the drawing to tell him he won big money! His winning numbers were 2, 5, 11, 15 and 18.
He kept the tickets in his safe until he could claim his prize at Lottery headquarters in Baltimore. Sleeping was tough on Sunday night, he said. “I wanted to get rid of those tickets!”
The winner plans to pay bills with his prize, buy a new vehicle, make some home repairs and put money into savings. His favorite retailer is also a winner; the Lottery will give the Soda Pop Shop a bonus of $6,000 for selling the lucky tickets.