Lotto punter claims top prize four times

It caused quite a stir last week, but it turns out the four winning Lotto First Division prizes sold at Patea Four Square last week were won by one person.

The woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, bagged herself a cool $570,000 on Saturday night. She picked out a few of her lucky numbers and decided to play them on four lines of her ticket, she told Lotto NZ.

“The way I see it, if I win a small prize on one line, I win it multiple times and it covers the cost of my ticket,” she said.

Lotto players have been speculating all week whether the store had defied the odds by selling four First Division-winning lotto tickets to separate winners.

There was speculation online the draw was “dodgy” or “rigged” but an AUT University statistics lecturer said it was “very, very unlikely” separate winners won the draw. The statistics expert calculated the chances of four different people buying a first division winning ticket in the same store in New Zealand in one week at about five chances in 100,000.

The woman who won fell asleep in front of the TV before waking up around 10pm on Saturday, missing the Lotto draw.

Before heading to bed, she checked her Lotto ticket and said it took a while before she realised she’d matched all six numbers on four lines of her ticket.

“I was still quite sleepy, so I didn’t understand what I was seeing at first,” she said.

The woman’s husband was fast asleep, unaware they were now nearly $600,000 richer at the time.

“I didn’t want to wake him up, he would’ve got the fright of his life,” the woman said. “But eventually I did, and after that, we didn’t get any more sleep that night.”

Keeping the winning ticket under her pillow, the couple lay awake thinking about their win.

“It will be nice to use some of the money to go on some family trips.

“We’ve got everything we need, this is for our kids, our grandkids — it will set them up for the future and it feels so good to know that we can do that for them.” Luke Kirkness