The euphoria was short-lived.
A Washington resident had the incredible surprise of discovering on the Powerball lottery site he had just played that he had won the $340 million jackpot, before he finally discovered that he could not. not win the jackpot.
For good reason, the winning numbers were not in reality those he had played, and his winnings were therefore refused.
After missing out on a colossal, potentially life-changing sum, he sued the DC Lottery last November.
John Cheeks bought a ticket to the famous American Powerball lottery on January 6, 2023, choosing among its numbers the dates of birth of members of his family.
An occasional player, he was attracted by the dizzying jackpot to be won.
The live draw took place the next day, but the player did not consult the results immediately, not imagining winning.
It was only the following day that he searched for them on his computer, then having the pleasant surprise of discovering that his numbers were winning.
“I was a little excited, but I didn’t scream, I didn’t scream.
I just politely called a friend.
I took a photo as he recommended, and that was it.
I fell asleep,” he told NBC Washington.
Unfortunately, the numbers displayed on the District of Columbia Lottery website were not the same as those in the January 7 drawing.
In his lawsuit, John Cheeks claims to have taken his presumed winning ticket to a retailer and then to a lottery office, and to have been refused twice.
The numbers displayed on the site were in fact not the same as those drawn live during the Powerball broadcast.
An employee responsible for complaints even told him: “This ticket is no good, throw it in the trash.”
Instead, John Cheeks preferred to keep this evidence and contact a lawyer.
“Not yet seen any evidence”
The plaintiff, who could have become the first multimillionaire of the year in the United States, claims that his numbers remained displayed on the site for three days, during which the Powerball jackpot amounted to $340 million.
He was eventually informed that a Washington-based lottery contractor, Taoti Enterprises, had accidentally posted incorrect winning numbers on the gambling site, according to the complaint filed by his attorney Richard Evans.
“They said one of their subcontractors made a mistake, I haven't seen any evidence to support that yet,” he replied.
For her part, Brittany Bailey, project manager at Taoti Enterprises, explained in a declaration to the court that the company was testing a feature that day that involved a change of time zone on the Powerball website.
The team would then have accidentally displayed test numbers directly on the real site, and not on a dummy interface which had been created for the occasion and which was not visible to Internet users, explains The Guardian.
Also read: California: the mystery of the two $395 million winning lottery tickets purchased at the same gas station
“Even if a mistake was made, the question arises: What do we do about it?
", asked the lawyer, referring to "a precedent": "A similar case which occurred in Iowa, where an error was admitted by an entrepreneur and where the winnings were paid", a- he recalled.
Last November, wrong numbers were displayed for more than six hours on the lottery website in this state, with game officials admitting to “human error”.
The players who had been wronged were then able to claim their prize, according to the Fox 9 channel. But this time the jackpots climbed to a maximum of 200 dollars, a far cry from the hundreds of millions that had made John Cheeks dream.
Powerball is played in 45 American states.
A ticket costs two dollars in most states, with the odds of hitting the jackpot being completely slim, on the order of 1 in 292 million.