What is it with Virginia Lottery winners and this new trend of winning big jackpots – twice – by purchasing duplicate tickets with identical numbers?
A player from the Virginia town of Vienna is the latest VA Lottery player to win two major jackpots on the same lotto draw.
VA Lottery officials recently announced that Jeffrey Demarco won the Cash 5 drawing on Sept. 12.
In fact, he won a pair of $100,000 jackpots for a total score of $200,000.
And it’s another chapter in the lottery lore of the Old Dominion.
Virginia lottery winner’s Cash 5 strategy
Virginia’s Cash 5 drawing takes place twice per day: 1:59 p.m. and 11 p.m.
Players choose five numbers from a pool of 34. The Cash 5 payouts include $5 for matching three numbers (1 in 69 odds), $100 for picking four numbers correctly (1 in 1,919) and the $100,000 grand prize for matching all five numbers (1 in 278,256).
Most players purchase $1 tickets. However, 25-cent and 50-cent play options are available, but the total ticket cost must equal at least $1.
Demarco, the recent two-time Cash 5 winner, purchased a pair of $1 tickets. However, both of his tickets had the numbers of 1-8-12-21-27, which resulted in the $200,000 payday.
According to the VA Lottery, Demarco purchased his winning tickets while shopping for groceries at the Harris Teeter supermarket (675 Avenir Place) in Vienna.
As he told lottery officials:
“You see other people winning, but you never think it will happen to you!”
Multiple multi-jackpot winners in Virginia
Demarco’s Cash 5 strategy was peculiar, to say the least. However, he’s not the only recent multi-time VA Lottery winner who let his lucky numbers run wild.
As we wrote earlier this month, two different Pick 4 winners also recently won – and won big.
One player purchased 20 winning tickets for the same Pick 4 draw. Another accomplished the same feat – with 25 tickets. They resulted in a $100,000 payout for the first winner and $125,000 for the other.
All of the winners didn’t hurt (or help) their odds of winning by purchasing identical tickets for the same drawing. Because the Cash 5 and Pick 4 have fixed odds, each jackpot paid the same amount.
However, some lotto games, including the multistate Powerball and Mega Millions drawings, award just one jackpot per draw. Therefore, if there are multiple winners (or, the same winner has multiple winning tickets), officials split and divvy up the jackpot.
If they wanted their lotto dollars to stretch further, Demarco and the other winners could have played multiple sets of numbers. But, at least this time, their decision to go big paid off handsomely.
