He Went to the Wrong Shop by Mistake. It Cost Him Nothing and Won Him $1 Million.

He is a fairly regular player with a fairly regular routine: Powerball tickets from the Walmart in Fallston, Maryland. On Sunday, 9 August he was shopping there and simply forgot. So he stopped instead at the Harvest Fare store a short drive away at 2315 Belair Road, still in Fallston, and picked up five quick pick combinations for the following night's drawing. Five sets of numbers he had not chosen, from a shop he had not planned to visit.

The Maryland Lottery says he checked the ticket the next day while sitting in his car. He did not see all of the numbers at first and came away thinking he had won something modest. Then he showed the ticket to his daughter. She looked at it, and told him he had matched five numbers - and that the ticket in his hand was worth $1 million. The lottery described him as happily shocked to learn how badly he had underestimated it.

The 10 August drawing produced the white balls 6, 37, 54, 55 and 64, with the red Powerball 10 and a Power Play multiplier of 3X. His five numbers were all there. The Powerball was not, which is the difference between the game's second-tier $1 million prize and a jackpot that stood at $929 million that night. Nobody won it. The jackpot rolled on to an estimated $975 million for Wednesday 12 August, was revised up to $1.0 billion before the draw, and was finally taken by a single ticket sold in Quincy, Illinois.

His was the third $1 million Powerball prize won in Maryland in the space of two weeks. Maryland players have 182 days from the drawing date to claim, and the state does not require winners of these prizes to go public - so the retired officer's story reached the press before his name did. Harvest Fare, the shop he was not planning to visit, receives a $2,500 bonus for selling a second-tier winning ticket.

The plans are unglamorous in the best way. He intends to pay off bills, including a recreational vehicle he had recently bought, and to take a trip to Florida for the holidays. Although he has retired his badge, he still works part-time to stay active. In his downtime, the Maryland Lottery notes, he does diamond-dot painting.

Powerball drawings are held on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday nights, and tickets are sold across most US states as well as Washington DC, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands and the United Kingdom. Players elsewhere can use a licensed lottery courier, which buys an official ticket on your behalf and holds it securely. Five white balls and one red Powerball - the same five quick picks that were sitting in a car in Fallston.