Joshua Orme might need to take a nice spring break getaway.
All thanks to a $5 million prize from the Virginia Lottery.
Orme, a small business owner from Amherst, nabbed the prize on a $326,000,000 Fortune scratch-off ticket he bought at Sardis Grocery Store — the latest in a string of big Virginia lottery winners.
Big Virginia Lottery payday for Amherst man
Orme took the ticket out to his car, where he scratched it to reveal the big win.
“It’s really surreal. I’m in a state of shock,” Orme said to Lottery officials while claiming his prize. Orme had the option to take a one-time cash payout of $3,125,000 before taxes or annual payments over 30 years. Orme opted for annual payments.
His win, $5 million, is the top prize in the $326,000,000 Fortune game from the Virginia Lottery. Orme was the first to win it; there are three top prizes, which means two more Virginians could earn a life-changing payday from the game.
The odds of winning the top prize in $326,000,000 Fortune are 1 in 2,774,400. Winning any prize in the game comes with odds of 1 in 3.43.
Sardis Grocery Store, which sold the winning ticket, gets a $10,000 bonus from the Virginia Lottery.
When asked how he felt about the big win, Orme kept it simple: “It feels pretty good!”
A week of lottery winners shine in Virginia
This week has been a lucky one for a select few Virginia Lottery players.
Winner Ben Baker claimed his prize this week after winning not once, but twice in the March 4 Powerball drawing. Baker bought 10 Powerball tickets from local store Food Lion, adding Power Play for an extra dollar.
Baker nabbed a cool $150,000 thanks to matching four white balls and selecting the Power Play option. Then another ticket hit, winning him $300,000 in total.
Not to be outdone, Kristeen Maddox claimed a jackpot of over $293,000 playing the VA online lottery game The Lamp.
And yet, the saga continued. Man Nguyen of Annandale noticed the VA Lottery app lingering on his phone and decided to buy a few tickets. That whim turned into a $1,000,000 payday when he matched the first five numbers in the Mega Millions drawing on February 28.
This all comes on the heels of Virginia’s biggest recent winner, a Powerball ticket purchased in Dublin that won the $162.6 million jackpot in early March.
