Virginia man wins Powerball with 2 tickets in same draw, totaling $150,000

Winning the lottery can be a once-in-a-lifetime experience, except for one Virginia man who twice won hundreds of thousands of Powerball dollars in the same draw this month.

Ben Baker, of Covington, purchased a total of 10 tickets for the March 4 Powerball draw at his local grocery store Food Lion, according to the Virginia Lottery.

Baker managed to match four of the winning numbers plus the Powerball number on two of his tickets for what would normally have been a $50,000 prize for each winning ticket.

The winning numbers for that draw were 10-16-18-40-66, and the Powerball number was 16, according to a Friday press release from the Virginia Lottery.

However, Baker had a bit more luck on his side.

Baker spent an extra dollar on each ticket for the Power Play, which tripled the winning prizes to $150,000 each, the lottery said.

Of the two winning tickets, Baker took home a total of $300,000.

Baker put it simply: “I really got lucky!”

He told the lottery he intended to use some of his winnings to improve his house and save the rest.

Powerball drawings take place at 10:59 p.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays.

According to the lottery, the odds of matching all six numbers to win the jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million. The overall odds of winning a Powerball prize are 1 in 25.

Earlier this month, a Michigan woman nearly missed a million dollar Powerball prize.

Ana Elizalde, 51, of Lansing, bought the ticket in February and gave it to her husband to keep, she told the Michigan Lottery.

“A week after the draw, my husband found the ticket in his coat pocket and realized that we had never checked it,” Elizalde said. “We went to the store to scan it and received a message to file a complaint. When we checked the numbers online and realized we had won $1 million.

Elizalde told the lottery board that she plans to use her Powerball prize to pay bills, her children’s education and savings.