John Cheeks, a Washington DC resident who thought he clinched a $340 million Powerball jackpot, is taking legal action against the lottery. The decision comes in after the game’s administrators asserted that their website mistakenly displayed Cheeks’ numbers as the winning combination.
Cheeks purchased a Powerball lottery ticket on January 6, 2023. However, unaware of the drawing, he saw his numbers on the DC lottery’s website two days later. The numbers on his ticket represented a combination of family birthdays and other personally meaningful digits.
Reporting to NBC Washington, Cheeks shared, “I got a little excited, but I didn’t shout, I didn’t scream. I just politely called a friend and took a picture as he recommended, and that was it. I went to sleep.” Sadly, Cheeks’ optimism turned to disappointment when he wanted to claim his prize at the Office of Lottery and Gaming (OLG).
According to court documents, administrators denied it, stating in a letter, “Petitioner’s prize claim was denied. This is because the ticket did not validate as a winner by the OLG’s gaming system as required by OLG regulations.”
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Cheeks further revealed a strange encounter while attempting to claim the jackpot. According to him, a claims staffer made a puzzling request, stating, “Hey, this ticket is no good. Just throw it in the trash can.” Expressing his disbelief, Cheeks recalled, “I gave him a stern look. I said, ‘In the trash can?”
The staffer responded discouragingly, saying, “Oh yeah, just throw it away. You’re not going to get paid. There’s a trash can right there.” However, Cheeks protected his ticket by putting it in a safe deposit box.
Subsequently, he sought legal counsel and initiated legal proceedings against Powerball. Additional defendants in Cheeks’ lawsuit include the Multi-State Lottery Association and game contractor Taoti Enterprises.
Brittany Bailey, a project manager at Taoti, revealed that the company’s quality assurance team tested a task. This was related to adjusting the time zones on the Powerball website. Bailey said they were changing from Coordinated Universal Time to Eastern Standard Time.
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Bailey stated that at 12:09 pm that day, the quality assurance team mistakenly published test Powerball numbers on the live website instead of the intended website. Notably, the intended website replicates the site but is inaccessible to the public.
Bailey clarified that the test numbers posted in January 2023 were not the winning numbers for the Powerball drawing scheduled for January 7, 2023. Subsequently, on January 8, the incorrect lottery numbers were presented alongside the actual winning numbers on the DC Lottery website.
Upon recognizing the mistake on January 9, the Taoti development team removed the incorrect numbers from the website. Despite Taoti’s assertions, Richard Evans, Cheeks’s attorney, remained skeptical. He informed NBC Washington, “They have said that one of their contractors made a mistake … I haven’t seen the evidence to support that yet.”
Evans continued, “Even if a mistake was made, What do you do about that?” Notably, Powerball is widely played in 45 states, including DC, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands.
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