A Virginia man discovered that he won a $1 million Powerball ticket---a week after the fact.
According to NBC Washington, Arthur Martin, a building engineer, said that he purchased the ticket ahead of the $700 million Powerball jackpot drawing on Aug. 23.
“I never checked the numbers,” he said.
His ticket matched the first five numbers -- 6, 7, 16, 23 and 26. He missed the Powerball number.
“It was surreal,” he said. “I thought I was just donating to the Virginia Lottery education fund. Took four days to get over the initial shock.”
Martin told NBC that he plans to pay off debts and enjoy a vacation with his family.
The odds of hitting the $1 million Powerball prize are 1 in 11,688,053.52.
The $758 million Powerball was claimed by 53-year-old Mavis L. Wanczyk from Chicopee, Mass., last month. She is now the winner of the largest single-ticket Powerball jackpot in history, according to reports at the time.
“He’s reading these numbers, and I pull mine out, and I go, ‘Hey, I have that number. And I have that -- I have that!’” she told reporters. “And he goes, ‘Let me see that ticket. You just won!’”
“My numbers were kind of basically random, like maybe with our birthdays, one from here, one from there,” she added. “There’s a thing between me and my mom and my stepfather and I have a friend, we all go out to dinner on a Friday night and we play Keno, and our number is four. I just happened to choose, and it worked to my advantage.”
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