Lottery blooper earns granny a small fortune

Published: April 10, 2006 | 3956th good news item since 2003

An Australian grandmother who made a mistake filling out her usual lottery entry on a new form has won more than AUS$2-million as a result.

The 79-year-old bought her usual AUS$2,30 ticket which allowed her four lines of numbers but accidentally duplicated one of the lines – which happened to be the winner, the New South Wales Lotto organisers said.

This gave her a total of AUS$2 333 333, while 17 other winners of the AUS$21-million pool had to settle for AUS$1 166 666.

“I still can’t believe I put in those two rows. Those are the same numbers I’ve been using since Lotto first opened,” the unnamed resident of Sydney’s Dee Why suburb said when told she had won.

“I know the numbers off by heart, I don’t even have to look at them because they are all based on family birthdays.

“They’d just put out those new entry forms, so I had to put my favourite numbers on the new form. I cannot understand why I put in an extra line.

“It must have been my lucky day or there’s someone up there looking after me,” she said, adding that she would use some of the money to take her family on an overseas holiday which they had never been able to afford.

Published in Sudden Wealth
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