Most can only dream of winning big on the lottery once in a lifetime, but a man from Virginia US scooped a $100,000 prize. Only to discover he had another ticket with the same winning numbers two days later!
The winning tickets belonging to Mario Loza refer to the Cash 5-day drawing on August 27th. Each winning ticket takes home a prize of $100,000, meaning that after two trips to the lottery office, Mario has raked in $200,000.
Mario purchased his two identical entries by “accident ” from the 7-Eleven store in Arlington. He told Virginia Lottery's Northern Virginia Customer Service Center that he had mistakenly bought two separate entries using his favorite numbers.
Both tickets bore the winning numbers 5-7-15-21-31.
Mario went on to say the winnings will go toward paying off his bills and preparing for retirement.
Statistician Ronald Wasserstein of the American Statistical Association says winning the lottery twice in one day statistically isn’t as improbable as it sounds.
“It is very unlikely that an individual will win two large prizes on scratch-off tickets on the same day; however, it’s very likely that it will happen to someone somewhere”.
“Since millions of people play the lottery every day, we can expect things like this to happen a few times a year somewhere in the U.S”.
Wasserstein has estimated the probability of winning $1 million and $10,000 on two tickets from scratch-off tickets is about 1 in 44,000,000.
In his report, he goes on to say that the only thing that you can do to increase your chance of winning is to buy more tickets!
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