Amanda Poss of New Bern said she carried around a Powerball ticket worth $200,000 for over two days and didn’t even know it.
“I really had no idea that I won,” Poss said. “I mean that ticket was everywhere. It was in my purse, on the counter, and then in my backpack for work.
Poss bought the $3 Power Play ticket on Saturday when she stopped at the East Havelock Fuel Market on East Main Street in Havelock. She didn’t check the numbers on her ticket until she got to work Tuesday morning. When she saw that she matched five numbers she didn’t know what to think. Poss immediately went to get her husband who works at the same company.
“He was in a staff meeting at the time,” Poss said. “I interrupted and was like, ‘Sorry, but I think we just won something. Someone in the room said there was a $200,000 ticket sold in Havelock, and my husband told me, ‘Well, you better go see if that’s you.’”
So Poss drove to lottery headquarters in Raleigh and claimed her prize. After required state and federal withholdings, she received $139,002. She plans to use some of the money to pay bills.
“It’s the best feeling in the world to know that everything will be taken care of,” Poss said. She also plans to take her family on a Christmas vacation.
Her ticket matched the numbers on the four white balls and the Powerball to win $50,000. Because she added the Power Play feature, the prize quadrupled to $200,000 when the 4X multiplier was drawn. She beat odds of 913,129 to win the prize.
Poss is one of four people to win big in Saturday’s Powerball drawing. Three other prizes ranging from $200,000 to $1 million remain unclaimed.
The jackpot for Wednesday’s drawing has reached an estimated $700 million annuity with a cash value of $443.3 million. This is the 2nd largest jackpot in Powerball game history and the 2nd largest among lottery jackpots in North America.
Ticket sales from draw games like Powerball make it possible for the lottery to raise more than half a billion dollars a year for the state. For details on how lottery funds have made a difference in all of North Carolina’s 100 counties, click on the “For Education” section of the lottery’s website.