A lucky punter has scooped a USD 50,000 lottery prize after accidentally putting too much money into a vending machine and ending up with a winning ticket.
The winner, who has chosen to stay anonymous but whose nickname is reportedly ‘Carlos Medina’, purchased the prize ticket in the city of Laurel, in the US state of Maryland.
Newsflash obtained a statement from the Maryland Lottery on Wednesday, 14th December, saying that the auto business employee had only meant to buy USD 20 (GBP 16.25) worth of tickets and ended up buying USD 40 (GBP 32.50) after he pressed the wrong button on the vending machine.
And one of the tickets turned out to be worth USD 50,000 (GBP 40,632).
The Maryland Lottery said: “Hitting the wrong button on a Lottery self-serve vending machine led a Bowie man to make a series of decisions that gave him a USD 50,000 prize and a trip to the Lottery Winner’s Circle in Baltimore.”
They added that the lucky winner had “visited Royal Farms #244 in Laurel to buy food, charge up his electric vehicle and buy a few Powerball tickets for the Dec. 10 drawing.” (sic)
They explained that he had “meant to buy USD 20 worth of tickets from the machine, but he accidentally hit the button that triggered the machine to cash him out, and the machine printed a USD 20 voucher instead.
“‘Carlos Medina’ scanned the voucher to put his USD 20 in credit back onto the machine, but inadvertently added another USD 20 to his order. Realizing he now had USD 40 worth of credit on the vending machine, ‘Carlos Medina’ decided to buy four USD 10 Powerball quick-pick tickets and went home.”
They continued: “Around 2 a.m., he finished painting a bathroom in his home’s basement and remembered to check his Powerball tickets. First, he Googled, ‘Who won the Powerball?’ using his phone.
“Seeing that no one won the jackpot that night, he checked the winning numbers on his phone against those on his tickets. And one of those tickets delivered a USD 50,000 prize! He was so excited that he woke up his brother to share the news.”
The lottery official said that the lucky winner plans to put his prize money in his bank account and save it, although he has not ruled out going on holiday.
