Two Retired Federal Coworkers Have Bought Powerball Tickets Together for Years. A $1 Add-On Just Turned It Into $100,000.

Two former coworkers at the U.S. Department of Transportation - one now living in Virginia, the other in Washington, D.C. - kept a habit going long after they left federal service: buying Powerball tickets together. According to the Maryland Lottery, the pair has continued pooling money for a ticket to every drawing since retiring from the agency.

Their latest ticket, bought for the Monday, August 24, 2026 drawing at the Giant Food store at 5815 Eastern Avenue in Hyattsville, matched four of the five white balls plus the Powerball - a third-tier prize worth $50,000 on its own. Because they had added Power Play to the ticket for an extra $1, and the multiplier drawn that night was 2X, their prize doubled to $100,000.

One of the two winners told the Maryland Lottery she first suspected something was different when a store terminal told her to contact the lottery directly - a message she didn't recognize until a neighbor explained that it usually means a large prize. "We finally won some money!" the pair said once the win was confirmed.

Both winners told the lottery they are comfortably retired with no outstanding debts, and said they hadn't yet settled on what to do with the extra $100,000. Maryland does not require lottery winners to be publicly identified beyond the details the lottery itself chooses to release, and neither winner's full name was disclosed.

Power Play is a $1 add-on available in most Powerball jurisdictions that multiplies non-jackpot prizes by 2X, 3X, 4X, 5X or, if the advertised jackpot is $150 million or less, sometimes 10X. The multiplier is drawn separately from the main numbers each drawing night. Powerball itself is played in 45 states plus Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, with drawings held Monday, Wednesday and Saturday nights.