Back when they both worked for the U.S. Department of Transportation, two Maryland Lottery fans would pool their resources and buy Powerball tickets for high jackpots. Since retirement, however, they decided to buy tickets for every drawing, and on Aug. 24 they won $100,000.
Over the years, they’d won the occasional prize in the $5 range and always put those winnings into extra tickets, they said Sept. 11 when they claimed the prize at Lottery headquarters in Baltimore.
Neither of the two are Maryland residents – one lives in Virginia, the other in the District – but they play in Maryland. In the aftermath of the Aug. 24 drawing, one of them took their tickets to her usual spot in Maryland and scanned them on a Lottery vending machine.
She got a message saying she should contact the Lottery. She was confused but saw a neighbor in the store. She asked the neighbor what the message meant and was informed that’s the message you receive when the prize on the ticket is big.
She then took the ticket to a ticket scanner on the counter, scanned it and saw it was worth $100,000.
She recalls saying, “We finally won some money!” She snapped a photo of the winning ticket and sent the image to her Lottery compadre, before slipping out of the shop.
They matched four of the first five white balls drawn plus the red Powerball for a third-tier win. The baseline for a third-tier prize is $50,000, but they had paid an extra $1 for the Power Play option, and the Power Play multiplier for that night was X2, increasing the prize to $100,000
The winners both said they aren’t sure what they’ll do with the winnings. Both are comfortably retired with no outstanding bills.
The third-tier winning ticket was sold at the Giant grocery store at 5815 Eastern Avenue in Hyattsville.
