After seven years of playing the lottery, a Delaware woman had a lucky break last month when one of the Ultimate Cash Instant Game tickets she’d bought at a gas station won her $100,000.
To celebrate her $100,000 win, the Delaware Lottery said in an Oct. 26 news release, the woman bought three Serious Money tickets on the way back from headquarters. One of them was a $300,000 top-prizewinner, bringing her pretax total to $400,000.
“When I scratched the $300,000 winning SERIOUS MONEY ticket later in the day, we just sat there in disbelief,” said the woman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to the Delaware Lottery, which does not publish winners’ names without consent.
Barbara Miller, deputy director for the Delaware Lottery, confirmed to The Washington Post that a winner did claim two six-figure prizes on the same day at the headquarters.
Delaware is one of only a handful of states with laws that allow winners to remain anonymous, according to the Multi-State Lottery Association. In others, winners’ names are public record.
Helene Keeley, acting director of the Delaware Lottery, congratulated the woman on her “double win.”
“It’s great to see our players bring home six-figure prizes,” Keeley said in a statement.
Lottery players across the country have been frantically buying tickets in recent days as the Powerball — one of the largest jackpot lottery games in the United States — recently soared to a record $1.9 billion value, the second time it has reached a 10-digit number.
Saturday’s Powerball drawing was the 40th consecutive one without a winner, and the next drawing is scheduled for Monday night. The jackpot’s odds are 1 in 292.2 million.
Double lottery wins like the one in Delaware are rare, but not unheard of.
In 2021, the Florida Lottery reported that Susan Fitton, 64, had won $4 million from two Mega Millions tickets in the same drawing. In September, the Iowa lottery reported that Mary Starks had won two $100,000 prizes in a span of more than two years.
Last year, Fayetteville, N.C., resident Scotty Thomas, 49, won two $25,000-a-year-for-life prizes after he accidentally bought two identical tickets online for one drawing, the state lottery announced. When he went to collect his winnings, NC Education Lottery said, he got to choose how to claim the prizes: combine the tickets for $50,000 a year for life, $25,000 a year for life with one ticket and the second as a sum of $390,000, or two sums of $390,000.
Thomas decided to take the two lump sums — totaling $780,000, ($551,851 after taxes) — to pay bills, help his family and potentially buy a house, the state lottery said.
The Delaware woman plans to use her prize money for her retirement fund, the news release said.
Before the Delaware woman’s double win, the most recent person from the state to claim a six-figure victory was an 81-year-old who won $100,000 from an Oct. 10 Powerball drawing, according to the state’s 2022 winners list.
Ben Brasch and Justine McDaniel contributed to this report.
