[imagesource:pixlr]

A US man who thought he’d won $340 million in a lottery is suing the organisers and a website which published his numbers, it has said, by mistake.

John Cheeks claimed that he spotted his numbers listed on the DC Lottery website on January 8, 2023, after purchasing a ticket for the Powerball drawing from the previous day.

He claims his chosen numbers – a mix of family birthdays and other numbers of personal significance – were online for three days.

But the numbers posted on the website were not those pulled out in the draw, because, according to Mr Cheeks’ case, a lottery contractor, Washington-based Taoti Enterprises, accidentally posted the wrong numbers – that it was a “mistake”, per Sky News.

Mr Cheeks told NBC4 Washington that he “got a little excited, but I didn’t shout, I didn’t scream” when he found the winning numbers were his.

“I just politely called a friend. I took a picture as he recommended, and that was it. I went to sleep.”

But when he woke up, his dreams of fortune were immediately shattered.

Mr Cheeks said that when he tried to claim the ticket, it was rejected, and he was met with another brick wall at the Washington office of lottery and gaming prize centre when an employee told him the ticket was “no good” and he should “just throw it in the trash can”, adding: “You’re not going to get paid. There’s a trash can right there.”

But the man was not going to relent so easily and put the ticket in a safe deposit box instead and contacted a lawyer.

Mr Cheeks’ lawyer, Richard Evans, said: “They have said that one of their contractors made a mistake. I haven’t seen the evidence to support that yet.

“Even if a mistake was made, the question becomes: What do you do about that?

Evans notes another case in Iowa, where a mistake was admitted to by a contractor and they paid the winnings out, setting the precedent for this case.

In the meantime, Cheeks will have to continue to run on the hamster wheel while this case is hashed out.

[source:skynews]