According to the Virginia Lottery, Meredith first showed someone his Mega Millions ticket from the May 20 drawing. He was told the ticket was not a winner.
However, he didn’t toss the ticket. Instead, he tucked it away and checked it again a few weeks later. That’s when he found out the ticket was a winner, although he didn’t yet know the amount of his win.
When he took the ticket to the Virginia Lottery’s Northern Virginia Customer Service Center in Woodbridge, at 14550 Potomac Mills Road, he discovered he had won the $1 million prize.
“I was hoping and praying!” he said in a lottery press release.
The winning numbers were 33-40-59-60-69, and the Mega Ball number was 22. He bought the ticket at Harris Teeter, at 10060 Market Circle in Manassas. He used Easy Pick and allowed the computer to select the numbers on his ticket randomly.
The ticket matched the first five winning numbers and missed only the Mega Ball number. If he had matched all six numbers, Mr. Meredith would have won a jackpot estimated at $131 million. Nevertheless, it was the only ticket in the nation to match the first five numbers in that drawing.
He’s not the only winner: Harris Teeter receives a $10,000 bonus from the Lottery for selling the winning ticket.
Mega Millions drawings are held Tuesday and Friday nights at 11 p.m. The odds of matching the first five numbers in Mega Millions are 1 in 12,607,306. The odds of matching all six numbers to win the jackpot are 1 in 302,575,350.
