May 23, 2008

Two Big Winners: $200,000 PowerBall® & $50,000 Instant Game

Two large prizes were awarded yesterday at the Rhode Island Lottery headquarters in Cranston.  A $200,000 winning PowerBall® ticket was claimed by two young women from Harrisville and Chepachet for the May 17th drawing.  The two rarely play the Lottery, but purchased the ticket together because the drawing date happened to fall on one of the woman’s 23rd birthday.

The woman whose birthday was on the same day as the drawing, had held onto the ticket.  She planned to surprise her best friend and fellow winner with the big news.  So, she told her friend they had only won $100, but needed to go to the Lottery to claim the prize.  It wasn’t until a member of the Lottery staff processed the claim and congratulated them on their big win that she learned its true value.  An expression of sheer shock was captured on the friends face by the birthday girl’s father, who had been standing by discreetly with a disposable camera.

The two women bought the winning ticket from Country Farms at 1200 Putnam Pike, Chepachet.  The ticket matched the first five numbers, but not the PowerBall number.  The standard payout for this type of win is $200,000.  However, if they had opted to purchase the Power Play® feature for an additional dollar on the wager, the $200,000 prize would have been multiplied by 3, that draw’s Power Play® number, to equal $600,000.

The second big winning ticket was claimed yesterday by a Wakefield man.  He scratched his way to $50,000 on “The M$ney Game” Instant Game.  He had purchased the ticket from Narragansett Mobil at 66 Point Judith Rd., Narragansett.   He plans to use a portion of the prize money to pay off bills and possibly buy his 16-year-old daughter her first car.