It was a win-win.
An Australian couple doubled their luck after miraculously scratching two $1 million lottery tickets in one week.
“It’s actually a funny story as to why we ended up with the same entry twice,” the anonymous lotto winner told The Lot after confirming his double jackpot, News.com.au reported.
Indeed, the lucky duck’s lottery happy hour started on an angry note: The Wollongong man said his wife had gotten mad with him after he forgot to submit her preferred ticket numbers last week.
Hoping to get out of the doghouse — and also the poor house — the partner-non-grata decided to “put them on twice to make up for it.” So he purchased two lotto tickets at two different news stands in their suburb of Dapto using the same numbers that his wife had been submitting for three decades.
The hubby’s forgiveness bid quickly proved fortuitous after the couple captured lightning in a lotto twice.
“This morning she kept crossing off number after number on her ticket, and once we realized we’d won $1 million [roughly $668,000 USD] on one ticket, I thought I should probably tell her about the second identical ticket too,” recalled the newly-minted multimillionaire.
The odds of winning the Australian lotto twice are unknown, but experts estimate that the odds of buying just one winning ticket are one in 1.845 million.
“I can’t believe this has happened to us,” said the man over his double-stroke of good luck.
Unlike many lotto winners who embark on self-serving splurges, the pair plans to use their $2 million help the family.
“My mind is racing with all the things I can do for my family,” said the woman. “I can buy my daughter a house. I can set up the children and grandchildren for the future.”
Meanwhile, any leftover winnings will fund the couple’s world travel and other leisure pursuits.
This isn’t the first time someone has gotten two winning lottery tickets in a short span of time. A 70-year-old Delaware woman became the envy of lotto players everywhere after winning six-figure lottery prizes from separate scratch-off tickets on Oct. 20, 2022.