Hamilton man claims $10.2 million Powerball prize

Media Release 24 June 2019

Hamilton man claims $10.2 million Powerball prize

The wait is over… Hamilton’s latest Powerball winner has finally come forward to claim his $10.2 million prize — despite knowing he had the winning ticket the whole time.

The man, who wishes to remain anonymous, initially had no idea Powerball had been struck let alone by a player from Hamilton when he checked his ticket last Sunday.

“I have a bit of a routine every Sunday morning where I check my Lotto ticket while eating breakfast,” said the man.

Grabbing his laptop and bringing up the results on MyLotto, the first thing that jumped out at the man was the winning Powerball number 5.

“Number 5 is my lucky number so I always choose to play it. When I saw that it was the winning number, I thought ‘well that’s a good start’,” said the man.

Moving onto checking the rest of his ticket, the man saw straight away he had matched the first three numbers on the same line.

“It wasn’t until I saw that I had the next three numbers as well that it really dawned on me what it all meant — I was $10.2 million richer!” said the man.

Unsure what to do next, the man picked up the phone and called his sister.

“When I told her how much I’d won, she didn’t believe me. She wanted to see the ticket herself so came racing over to my place and together we checked it on the Lotto NZ App.

“Sure enough when we scanned it, the words ‘Major Prize winner’ appeared. It was all the confirmation I needed,” said the man.

Despite the man knowing that he was holding onto a multi-million dollar ticket, the winner decided to pop his ticket in his safe and sit on it for the next week.

“I had a few work commitments and I wanted to get everything in order before I went to Auckland to claim the prize,” said the winner.

One of those things on his to-do list was sharing the news with his kids.

“I invited everyone over for a pizza night and told them that I had some exciting news to share,” said the man.

Initially telling his kids he had won $250,000 on Lotto, the man watched as everyone erupted in celebration.

“That’s when I told them, ‘well you better add $10 million to that!’ It took a few moments for them to click what I meant, but then the excitement really kicked off!” said the man.

Claiming his prize in person at Lotto New Zealand’s Head Office this week, the winner has had some time to think about what he might do with the winnings.

“I want to start ticking things off my bucket list, so the first thing I want to do is go travelling. Escaping to a European summer sounds like a good idea to me,” said the man.

The winning ticket was sold at Whitcoulls the Base in Hamilton for the draw on Saturday 15 June.

This is the tenth time Powerball First Division has been struck so far this year.

Background

Powerball First Division wins in 2019

ENDS

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