“I have a feeling it has gone from my hand. So I am really excited to see who won.”
The mouth-watering sum was up for grabs in Saturday’s Super Saturday Lotto Powerball draw.
The winning numbers were: 5, 31, 38, 3, 27, and 29. The Bonus Ball was 21, and the Power Ball was 5.
Nobody won Strike Four so that $300,000 jackpot will now move to Wednesday night.
It is the second biggest Lotto win this year. This year’s biggest winner was an Auckland grandmother who took home a whopping $28.1 million in late March.
The jackpot-winning ticket was bought from Meg Star in Henderson, and the woman only realised she had won while she was out shopping and had decided to check a few tickets she had piled up.
“My heart started racing, I just couldn’t believe it. The owner took me out the back of the store to let me know exactly how much I’d won and sort out the paperwork somewhere private – which was good, because by that stage I was shaking and crying, I was so overwhelmed,” the woman said.
In mid-August, one lucky Powerball player from Kaikōura was on cloud nine after winning $8.2m with Powerball First Division. The winning ticket was sold at New World Kaikōura in the town.
The prize was made up of $8m from Powerball First Division and $200,000 from Lotto First Division.
The win was the 13th multi-millionaire of 2022, and came just a fortnight after a lucky player from Lower Hutt won $6.5m with Powerball First Division.
In late October, a Wellington couple secured a $16m prize.
After realising they had won, they spent a restless night dreaming about what they could spend the money on.
“I kept nudging my husband every half hour or so to see if he was asleep, my mind was racing with all the amazing things we’d be able to do, and I needed to talk,” the woman said.
“He was a bit calmer than me, but only because he wasn’t sure it was actually real.”
The couple purchased their ticket online and were staggered when they received a message saying they had won money in the draw.
“I honestly thought it was a glitch – never in a million years did I think we’d win,” the woman’s partner said.
“We waited a while and when we saw in the news that $16m had been won in Wellington, that’s when I started to think ‘okay, maybe it could be us’.”
