Oz Lotto Winner Wins Jackpot Twice in a Single Draw
A Melbourne man is celebrating double success after accidentally buying two tickets with the same numbers for Tuesday’s Oz Lotto draw in Australia and seeing them both scoop the jackpot. He is now considering whether to retire with his AU$46.6 million (£25 million) winnings, 30 years after he first started buying lottery tickets.
The Oz Lotto winner has chosen to remain anonymous, but told Australian lottery officials he was speechless on receiving the incredible news. He plans to splash out on a “new home or a holiday” and will “definitely share it with my family”.
Two Matching Oz Lotto Tickets
The jackpot winner bought his first ticket at Winning Lotteries in the St Albans suburb of Melbourne on the day of the draw, before picking up a further entry at Footscray Lottery Centre just hours later. Seemingly he has simply forgotten his earlier purchase.
His mistake paid off, however, as the Oz Lotto jackpot on Tuesday 26th March was shared between three winning tickets, two of them his! He claims a two-thirds share of the AU$70 million (£38 million) bounty, with the other AU$ 23.3 million portion waiting to be claimed by an unregistered Tasmanian player who has yet to contact Australian Lottery operator, The Lott.
The double winner claims that he used his regular Oz Lotto numbers, which he confessed had never held any particular significance in the past. Now this random selection has mae him very rich indeed.
The winning Oz Lotto Numbers for Tuesday 26th March were 9, 12, 18, 24, 25, 28 and 29 with supplementaries 13 and 31. There were more than 1.1 million prize winners on the night, with prizes ranging from AU$15.40 (£8) for each of the Division 7 players who matched three main numbers and a supplementary to the AU$70 million for the Division 1 pool.
Next Tuesday’s top prize will stand at AU$2 million (£1 million).
Other Fortunate Australian Lottery Mistakes
The Melbourne winner isn’t the first player to strike the jackpot of an Australian lottery with two tickets in the same draw. In October 2018, a Queensland player scooped two shares of the Saturday Lotto Division 1 pool following a similar happy accident. He banked AU$1.9 million (£1 million) instead of the AU$993,000 (£531,000) on offer for the single tickets that matched all of the winning numbers.
A Cairns woman also boosted her Saturday Lotto prize in February 2016 after a similar mix up. The lucky winner scooped nearly AU$1.3 million (£696,000) rather than the basic AU$647,000 (£346,000) award.
You can try your Oz Lotto numbers out next week, if you fancy getting hold of AU$2 million. Visit the Lotto Tickets page to pick them now.