A Washington DC resident is taking legal action against the Powerball lottery, alleging that he was wrongly denied a $340 million jackpot due to a website glitch. John Cheeks claims that his winning numbers were wrongly displayed as the winning combination.
After buying the Powerball ticket on January 6, 2023, Cheeks found he might have won by checking the DC lottery’s website two days later. But when he tried to cash in the ticket, lottery officials turned him down.
This incident has sparked inquiries into the accountability and outcomes associated with errors in the lottery system. Powerball is played in 45 American states, Washington DC, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands. It has a ticket cost of $2, and the odds of winning the jackpot are remarkably slim, at one in 292.2 million.
Court documents state that lottery administrators said Cheeks’ ticket wasn’t confirmed as a winner by the gaming system, so they didn’t give him the prize.
A lottery employee reportedly told Cheeks, “This ticket is no good. Just throw it in the trash can.” Cheeks remembered responding with a serious look and asking, “In the trash can?” The employee replied, “Yeah, just throw it away. You’re not going to get paid. There’s a trash can right there.”
Instead of throwing it away, Cheeks kept the ticket safe in a deposit box and sought legal help to sue Powerball.
The lawsuit involves other parties such as the Multi-State Lottery Association and Taoti Enterprises, the game contractor. In a court declaration, Brittany Bailey, a project manager at Taoti, explained that the website glitch happened during a testing phase that involved adjusting time zones.
The error of prematurely displaying test Powerball numbers on the live website one day prior to the drawing was attributed to a mistake by the quality assurance team.
Despite Taoti’s acknowledgement of the error, Richard Evans, Cheeks’s attorney, has questioned the evidence supporting the contractor’s claim.
Although Taoti has admitted to the error, Richard Evans, the attorney representing Cheeks, has raised doubts regarding the evidence backing the contractor’s claim.
Evans referenced a previous case from November 2023, where the Iowa Lottery paid temporary winners even though the wrong Powerball numbers were posted.
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