Lotto NZ today announced a wrap on the $50 million Must Be Won draw, which took place on 8 June, with all seven winners finally claiming their prizes.

The last to claim was an Auckland couple who took over two weeks to check their ticket.

The couple, who wish to remain anonymous, play Lotto occasionally and picked up a ticket because it was a Must Be Won draw.

Later that night they became multi-millionaires, but it was a life-changing event they wouldn’t discover for another two weeks.

After buying their ticket, the couple hadn’t paid much attention to the result of the draw, and so didn’t know a winning ticket had been sold at their local store.

“Because we don’t buy tickets all the time, we usually only check our tickets when we remember to – we weren’t in a rush,” said the man.

A couple of weeks passed, and the man remembered the ticket, which was in his wife’s handbag for safekeeping. He dug it out and scanned it using the MyLotto App.

“The app told me I’d won a major prize and to take the ticket to a Lotto store. I wasn’t sure how much I’d won… but I had a feeling that it was a big amount.”

The man stashed their ticket back in his wife’s handbag so they could check it when they went grocery shopping the next day. Before doing the shopping, they took their winning ticket to the Lotto counter.

“They told us we had won $7 million – we were so excited!” he said.

Later that day, the couple called a family meeting to tell their children about their win.

“We thought something serious had happened, they don’t usually ask us to get together quickly like that!” said one of their children.

“We all sat around the table waiting and that’s when they told us they had won $7 million with Powerball. We were all so excited for them!

“There were lots of tears for sure. They’ve worked incredibly hard all their lives for us, they really deserve this,” they said.

The family celebrated with a couple of drinks and chatted about what they hoped their parents would do with the money.

“They’ve slowly been doing bits on the house, and now they can afford to finish the renovations,” said one of the children.

“We really want them to do something for themselves though. They’ve been talking about a special overseas trip for a long time and now they can do that, it will be amazing for them,” said another.

Renovations and trips aside, when asked what winning Powerball meant to them, the man gestured to his children and said:

“It’s all for them – everything has been. It means so much to know that my family will be looked after.”

Notes:

• The winning $7.18 million Powerball ticket was sold at Royal Oak Mall Lotto for the $50 million Must Be Won draw on Saturday 8 June.
• The $7.18 million Powerball prize is made up of $7,155,649 million from Powerball First and Second Division and $24,392 from Lotto Second Division, making it a total prize of $7,180,041.
• The winners would like to remain anonymous and do not want to provide any further comment at this stage.
• There have been 13 Powerball winners so far this year – seven of those from the Must Be Won draw.

Powerball wins in 2024:

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