BATON ROUGE, La. — Mary Roberts of Boyce, Louisiana, became the Louisiana Lottery's first millionaire of 2012 when she claimed a $1 million Powerball prize from the Feb. 11 drawing at Lottery headquarters on Tuesday, accompanied by her husband, Mike.
The win also marks the first $1 million "match-5" prize for the Louisiana Lottery since the Powerball game changed in January.
"I came home from the grocery store and found Mike at the computer shaking," said Roberts, "Then I saw that he was checking the winning numbers on the Lottery's website. We couldn't believe it!"
Regular Powerball and Lotto players, the Roberts have always used their kids' birthdays to choose their numbers, but the couple opted for a Quick Pick ticket for the Feb. 11 drawing, meaning the numbers were randomly generated by the Lottery's system.
The winning ticket matched all five white ball numbers, but missed the red Powerball number, to win $1 million. The Boyce couple received $700,000 after state and federal taxes were withheld. The winning numbers were 01-10-37-52-57 and the Powerball number was 11.
Mike Roberts said his first order of business is to purchase his wife her dream car, a Mustang convertible. The self-proclaimed "ordinary" couple said they plan to use their winnings to move closer to their children in Shreveport.
The couple purchased the winning ticket at Super 1 Foods #601 on MacArthur Drive in Alexandria. The store will receive a bonus of $10,000, which is 1 percent of the prize, for selling the Roberts' their winning ticket.
The Powerball game underwent several enhancements last month to create bigger jackpots, more millionaires and better odds of winning. In addition to a price increase to $2 per play, the game's "match-5" prize quadrupled from $200,000 to $1 million.
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Um hello, I am "ordinary" too!
Lol awesome story and LOL @ Mike shaking, on the computer. WTG couple!
The second prize for Powerball is now a game changer for most people. Used to be with the old second prize of $200K you could pay off some bills, get a sweet ride throw some green towards family & friends; but for most people could still not consider retirement.
$1,000,000.00 is serious money, and if invested wisely, it could lead to a nice "happily Ever After" lifestyle.
Hey New York, just noticed were both up to 322 posts.
Whoops, now I'm 323 with last post and 324 with this one.
So many posts...so little time.
Congratulations to the " Ordinary" couple..!
That picture just makes me smile. What a nice win for these people.
I hope one day dozens of people win the second prize like they did a few years ago when they used numbers from Wonton fortune cookies. It will be interesting because now all the second prizes win a cool $1M. It'll happen in time.
I'm pretty sure there is a provision in place for that scenario in the Powerball legal disclaimer. There is a "cap" as to how many of these millionaires can be paid in one drawing before exhausting the standard reserve amounts sitting in their bank accounts.
I remember that "fortune cookie" incident from 2005, it was hilarious.
They immediately suspected some type of fraud or tampering with the lotto system. I believe this occurred in upper state NY.
so u agree that their is some rigging going on.
No it's not "rigging", it's a standard legal clause that every lottery has in place to protect the integrity of the game. If thousands of people were to score the second prize in one Powerball drawing, there would literally be no funds available to pay all claimants.
This has nothing to do with "rigging" anything.
I know. I was just kick in your stones from our little debate from yesterday.lol. good luck on BP tonight.
No problem kyok....we can all use a good swift kick from time to time. Keeps thing fresh and in the open. With your Karate skills, I'm sure it would be a real nice kick to!
Good luck to you as well my friend.
Slap on the face of all conspiracy theorists. Hopefully the jackpot winner is also ordinary American.
Just surfing through LP forums, noticing you are now officially "Platinum" New York, it's about 10:12PM.
Congrats again!
From the Article:
"The Powerball game underwent several enhancements last month to create bigger jackpots, more millionaires and better odds of winning. In addition to a price increase to $2 per play, the game's "match-5" prize quadrupled from $200,000 to $1 million."
It didn't QUADRUPLE it QUINTUPLED! LOL .... Just thought I would point that out.
What made me smile was seeing BOTH of their names on the check (which means that perhaps they went with a 50%/50% split on the claim form).
Congratulations to them, oh what a conspiracy, an "ordinary" couple, winning the second tier prize.
Lol, no, truly it must have been a really ecstatic win. Lol on the poster stating the 50/50 share, I'll keep mine while you keep yours.
Tonight's powerball, I hope it does not hit. I want to see whether we are going to have a rollover of close to or more than $80 million. In every true sense, this is the real beginning of bigger jackpots for the $2 prize.
I hope I am making sense, lol.
All the same, good luck to all......
Well, no. However, if a lottery ticket gambler pays an extra $1 to turn the ticket into a Powerplay ... a second prize win by them would be instantly upped to $2,000,000. NOW THAT amount (after taxes) would be enough for retirement -- no matter one's age; if one invested the entire remainder amount, then only lived off of the annual interest (minus annual Capital Gains taxes) each of the following years of their lifetime thereafter.
I was just commenting on the Louisiana couple who won the million with the standard $2 ticket, in relation to the older second tier prize of $200K.
Obviously for a $1 more you could double that with Powerplay and retire instantly. Or better yet just take all the marbles and call in rich 2-nite!
Wait a minute, the PB annuinitized (I am nit certain I spelled that correctly), increased by just $10 million?! Hmm, might be, fewer sales were made.
Well, let's see if we might get a next rollover and watch for a significant increase.
I like Mike, he chose a Mustang.
Was just reading this. They never gave up.
February 14, 2012– A group of 16 players from the Omaha area will share a $1,000,000 Nebraska Powerball prize.
Each week for almost a decade, Christopher Braun of Omaha and his 15 co-workers at the City of Omaha Roads Department have pooled their money together to purchase Powerball tickets. For the Wednesday, February 8 drawing, the group purchased 16 quick pick tickets at Kwik Shop, 7525 Cass Street in Omaha. One of these tickets contained all five the winning white ball numbers (17, 28, 38, 39, 51) for a corresponding prize of $1,000,000.
Congrats to the "ordinary couple"!! That money should help make their Golden Years truly golden!
Yeah mega and powerball had no winners and increased pretty much the same amount .It would be interesting to know how many tickets were sold for each game. Powerball had to have low sales............
Yeah. Good call out. Nice to see MONEY didn't create negative drama but poistive change.
After a big win trend data supports that sales in the following play are low. We gamblers are all pissed and spending are money on beer only that week- lol. If i flips again and flips by the minimum $10m then its safe to assume that sales are dipping.
Congrats to my fellow ordinary people!
My headline will talk about the ordinary guy that won & drove home in his brand spankin' new Bentley .............
My dream since I was 10 years old. I recognized a true work of art at an early age .......... the only thing missing ........... was good fortune
I have always played for fun .............. and it is not the end of the world when I don't get the Jackpot ................
A picture of the new Bentley .......... but not of me .............. wouldn't want to scare anyone
Oh ...... and it takes over 170 hours to create the interior of a Mulsanne ......... I am not sure if it takes quite that long to do the inside of a Cadillac ........ sorry to be cheeky about it ...............
Kudos to the "ordinary" couple that won..guess us "ordinaries" have a chance at winning after all....I think I should start with the MM tomorrow night or PB the night after and be an ordinary jackpot winner...
I agree CDanaT ............. just wait 'till you see the pic of my $330,000 Mulsanne sitting in front of my $35,000 house ............ ordinary meets sumptuous
Let's "roll" with Mega Millions and Powerball ............ just for fun!
CMI
I am glad you understood the question I was trying to get a logical response to. I am going by 2 observations.
1.) People are holding on unto their $2 until, the kackpot gets significantly high, I am guilty of that....lol. Unfortunately, if people are doing so, thereby shrinking the increase of jackpot rollover with fewer tickets being sold.
2.) The lottery commission decided the take the increase of jackpot prizes very steeply. Thus, their slogan of bigger jackpots, fails to meet their promise.
However, I am willing to watch the pattern, let's see if we have a few more rollovers and watch the increase pattern.
I support your last statement 100%!
It is far too early to make these enormous assumptions that sales have plummeted. As I mentioned in my earlier post regarding this, trends suggest that players take a break after chasing a growing jackpot and someone wins it. I track every imaginable facet of the lottery game - lol. I think over the next few plays if no one wins we can measure any discernable changes positively or negatively to determine the impact of the controversial cost increase.
Players by strategy have different points at which they jump onboard and I can argue that more will jump onboard a lot quicker given that the starting jackpot is signifacntly higher.
Congrats to the winners......
congrat's to the Robert's on their powerball win. ENJOY!!
If the minimum increases keep happening after a jackpot win I could see people getting bored/frusterated with the game really fast.