Charles County Man Finds $50,000 ‘Needle’ in Stack of Powerball Tickets

Winner discovers winning ticket months after drawing

Spring cleaning led a lucky Charles County man to his largest Maryland Lottery win ever. A winning Powerball ticket, good for a $50,000 prize, was nestled like a needle in a haystack in a pile of Powerball tickets since he purchased it in early January.

The winner, a 50-year-old former government worker, said he discovered his Lottery luck in early March while working his way through a stack of weekly Powerball purchases that had piled up since January 2021. That was the month Powerball concluded its historic roll, ending on a jackpot of $731.1 million on a ticket — still unclaimed — sold by Coney Market in Lonaconing.

What began as a ticket-checking chore soon became a celebration. The player was scanning his tickets using the Lottery’s mobile ticket checker app when he discovered the lucky $10 quick-pick ticket from the Jan. 6 drawing.

“The app flashed back a prize amount that surprised me — $50,000! I rushed upstairs to tell my wife I had finally won,” said the happy player.

He and his wife are still discussing how to enjoy the windfall, the winner told Lottery officials. For now, they plan to put their $50,000 winnings into savings and retirement funds.

The Powerball fan bought the lucky ticket at Dash In #7034 located at 7100 Matthews Road in Bryans Road.