In no particular order, here are a few of the LUCKIEST lottery winners ever!
12 - Joan Ginther Joan Ginther’s story is the stuff
of legend. The fact that she refuses to grant interviews adds even more to the mystery!
She’s probably one of the luckiest people alive. She’s won the lottery not once,
or twice, or three times. But she’s won multi-million lotteries FOUR separate times!
Her combined wins total to roughly $20.4 million dollars. Her first major win was a
$5.4 million dollar win back in 1993 in the Texas Lotto. Her second win was in 2006, when she won
two million bucks in the Holiday Millionaire scratch-off game. In 2008, she won a THIRD time
playing the Millions and Millions lottery. If you’re asking us, it’s kind of appropriate she
won $3 million bucks on her third win. Her final and biggest win was in 2010
when she won $10 million dollars from a lottery called Extreme Payoff. What’s her secret? Did she
win with insider information? Or is she simply just one of the luckiest people in the world?
11 - Melvyn Wilson Mr. Luck was the nickname
people close to him gave him back in 2005. That was around the time when Melvyn started pulling
in big lottery wins! Between 2004 and 2005, Wilson won 3 different lotteries, with the total
wins worth more than one and a half million bucks. His very first win stint was around November 2004.
That got him $500,000 dollars. He later followed up that win with a $25,000 dollar win in March
of 2005. That’s not too bad. A win is still a win. But then, he hit a bigger win on his
third one. He won a million bucks from a scratch-off ticket in September of 2005.
After that, the wins stopped, something that’s SUPPOSED to happen. But 8 years later in 2013,
Lady Luck decided to visit Melvyn again! In May 2013, he won another half a million dollars in
the Millionaire Mania game. That brought his lottery winnings to just over $2 million bucks.
What was Melvyn’s method? He says he plays the lottery every day except Sunday! His motto is,
“You gotta play to win”. 10 - Orlene Peterson
1 in 282.5 million. Those are the odds Peterson beat to win TWO different lotteries using tickets
she bought from different stores! Her first winning ticket was worth $200,000 thousand.
That was also the first top prize for the lottery scratch off game, Grand Fortunes. For Orlene,
it was the first win for her playing the lottery. And it was just the beginning of her good fortune!
The next day, she bought another ticket. This time around it was for the scratch off game
Comin’ in Hot. Do we need to say she didn’t expect to win big AGAIN? It was another big surprise to
her when it turned out she had scored $300,000 grand just a day after her first 200 grand win.
Peterson told the media that she had her mind set on a trip to Las Vegas. But that’ll be after she
had paid off her bills and bought a new truck! 9 - Robert Stuart
For a lot of people, winning the lottery is all about finally quitting some job they hate.
Not for Robert Stuart. His extraordinary luck winning the lottery twice for $1.1 million dollars
couldn’t convince him to change his life! He kept his job as a tractor driver working as
much as 11 hours a day. And to top it all off, he’s continued living in a trailer. He hasn’t
upgraded his life in the material sense at all! Do we need to say that this is a bit unusual for
lottery winners? Well, technically, he did say he decided to make some repairs to his trailer home.
Stuart’s first win was for a cool million dollars back in May of 2019.
He put in 25 bucks for the scratch-off, Ultimate Millions. Buying the ticket was actually a last
minute decision when he was at the grocery store. AND, as amazed as he was to win,
Robert didn’t claim his winnings immediately. He actually waited a week to claim his prize. That’s
because it was the earliest his work schedule would allow him to go to the lottery office!
Four months later, he got lucky again! This time, it was for $100,000
dollars. And if a million bucks wasn’t going to get Robert out of his trailer, 100 grand
definitely wasn’t going to do it either. Besides maintaining his normal life,
Robert also went against most experts’ advice by declining to hire any lawyers or accountants. He
instead went to his bank’s free financial adviser for some pointers on how to invest!
8 - Michelle Shuffler
No matter if you’ve been playing for a day or for a million years,
the odds to win never change. Lotteries are purely a game of chance. Michelle Shuffler and
her husband don’t play the lottery much, and that didn’t matter when they won the lottery in 2017.
The North Carolina couple had a few dollars to spare that day, so they decided to put
the money in the lottery. They bought their first ticket at a random gas station. And that Million
Dollar Fever scratch-off ticket won them ten grand! Winning gave them some confidence, and
they decided to press their luck again! So they bought another ticket from
another gas station about 20 miles away. They bought another Million Dollar Fever ticket.
And just like the first time, they won! Except they won the million dollar grand prize!
Two big wins all on the same day! They didn’t take the lump sum and opted
for yearly payments of $50,000 dollars which comes to around $35,000 dollars after taxes.
What would you have taken? Shuffler said that they planned to save the money for retirement
AND help pay for their kids’ college education. 7 - Armand Paganelli
He seems to be a bit different from your average lottery ticket selling store owner.
This Bronx businessman runs a family drug store that’s been in business since 1964.
He’s also, in his words, an avid gambler! Store owners win whenever they sell big winning
tickets from customers playing the lottery. They’re assured of a check every time they sell
a winning ticket. But we don’t hear much about the owners that play the lottery themselves. But it
may be safe to say Armand is THE luckiest one! Whatever strategy he’s got going on seems to
be working for him for sure. Between 2013 and 2014, Armand had a total 16 wins that got him
six hundred twenty five grand in cash! His biggest win was a $250,000 dollar win that came from a
Mega Millions ticket. The rest were tickets that were worth twenty five grand apiece from Armand
playing the Win 4 lottery. That’s a game that’s much more secure than the average scratch off
ticket, where unethical retailers can illegally check for winners. That pretty much puts any
questions of Armand rigging any lotteries to rest! Armand had won more $10,000 dollar or more
jackpots than anyone else in the state of New York between 2011 and 2015!
He told the media that his winnings were probably simply because he bought lots
of tickets. He acknowledged that the money he spends on tickets might just be more than his
total winnings! Whether he’s a compulsive gambler or not, that’s a different issue.
It seems like he was already rich though before his wins. He said the winnings
have been divided between his kid’s college tuition and giving to charity. He’s a board
member of the Bronx Boys & Girls Club, and his office is filled with photos of charity events!
6 - Bryan Moss Who wins the lottery six times? Bryan Moss
does! He seems to have a lucky charm when it comes to playing lotteries. In January of 2021, he won
a quarter million dollars, the jackpot in the Idaho Lottery Scratch Game, $250,000 Crossword.
It isn’t clear how much he won in his other 5 wins, but his 6 wins ARE confirmed by the Idaho
Lottery themselves. They just don’t want to divulge the amount, although they did confirm
that it’s less than the jackpot he won. Of course, Bryan’s friends and family have
noticed his good luck. According to him, quite a few people have asked him to play for them,
something he’s done before. But he says his luck only works for him! And the reason he plays the
lottery is because he wants to support Idaho Public Schools. But do state education systems
REALLY benefit overall from the lottery? Find out all about it in this video!
5 - Joe B The luckiest man in Colorado may just
be this guy. He made himself known only as Joe B. Is that smart? We would have gone fully anonymous,
but this may be just as good. Joe has been playing the lottery for 30 years. During that time,
he didn’t have any major wins. But 2020 was HIS year, even if none of us liked 2020.
Over the past three decades, he bought two lottery tickets daily, one in the morning and one at
night, with both tickets from two different stores. Everyday twice, he’d play the same
set of numbers, 5-9-27-39-42. For 30 years it didn’t pay off. Until March of 2020!
He hit the Powerball jackpot. And not just once. But TWICE. On the same day! He became
the first Powerball two-time winner in the state of Colorado. For that, our guy took home
$2 million bucks, a decent amount for his 30 years of perseverance. I’m sure someone
out there who likes spreadsheets can see how much money he’d have if he just saved the money he put
into lottery tickets everyday. But that’s not us. When he was asked what he would do with his money,
Lucky Joe B said that they’d have to ask his boss, aka his wife. Ooookayyyy!
4 - Virginia Fike Mistakes sometimes work for and
against us. For Virginia Fike, the mistake went her way and that made all the difference in her
bank account! In 2012, she had intended to play both the Powerball and Mega Millions lotteries
using the same set of numbers. But that didn’t happen. She ended up buying tickets for the same
game, something she didn’t realize until she was holding two Powerball tickets. So she decided to
stick with it and play the same numbers twice in the same lottery. And it turns out that it
was the greatest decision ever for her! Yes, typically, winners split the jackpot
regardless of how many winners there are. But that isn’t true for
non-jackpot prizes. Those same numbers can win multiple times since they don’t split.
Her set of numbers matched 5 out of the 6 for the powerball. So if she actually won the jackpot,
she would have gotten the same amount of money. But for her consolation prize, each ticket was
worth a million bucks! She was actually in the hospital visiting her mom when she found out she
won. Virginia watched a report on TV about there being two million dollar winners in Virginia.
She told the media that she looked at her mom and said “Wouldn't it be funny if it was us?'"!
And of course, she told the media that she would take care of her mom’s hospital bills,
in addition to the usual “investing the money wisely” of course.
3 - Lena Eaton Living to be more than 90
years old is already lucky. In fact, roughly one percent of the population get this age! So for
Indiana-based Lena Eaton, getting to the age of 91 back in 2012 was already kind of against all odds.
But in that same year, she went against even bigger odds. She won
two different lotteries twice! She bought her first winning ticket in August
of 2012 for the Hoosier Lottery. That got her $300 grand. Her odds of winning were 1 in 8.9 million.
Her second win came a few months later in November of the same year. She bought a $5 dollar Scorchin’
Hot 9s scratch-off ticket. For her five bucks, grandma Lena won a dollar less than a hundred
grand. That brought her total winnings to just under $400,000 dollars in four months!
With the two wins, she beat incredible odds of one in 5.7 TRILLION. She told the media at the
time that she was going to use the money to redo her house, as well as travel a bit. And oh yeah,
she also said she’d treat her more than 20 great grand-kids to a lil bit of cash!
2 - Kenneth Stokes In 2014, Stokes beat the
odds and won the same lottery…..twice. Each winning ticket got him half a million bucks,
or a million dollars in total winnings if he took the annuity. Kenny decided to go for a
one-time lump sum payout for both tickets, so he got five hundred and forty six grand after taxes.
Just like some other two time winners, he accidentally bought tickets using the same set of
numbers. His family had gifted him a season pass to the Massachusetts State Lottery Lucky for Life
drawing. That automatically entered him into every drawing of the lottery with the set of numbers he
chose. But Kenny forgot about it. So he played the same numbers on another ticket, numbers that were
based on the birthdays of several family members. The lottery rep called Kenny up to let him know
that he won. At that moment in time, Kenny still didn’t know that he had won twice! The rep
mentioned that the other winner lived in the same town as Kenny. When they got off the phone, that’s
when Kenny realized he was the other winner! Kenny said he’d use the money to pay for his
son’s college tuition, clear his daughter’s remaining car payments,
and take his family on a nice vacation. Hopefully he saved at least some of that money!
1 - Calvin and Zatera Spencer Calvin and Zatera had quite THE winning
streak back in March 2014, when they were playing the lottery. On March 12th, the couple first
won a million bucks playing the Powerball! They matched enough numbers to win a consolation prize.
Two weeks later on March 26th, Calvin played the Virginia Lottery’s Pick
4 game. And he won an astounding TEN times, for a total of fifty grand! And he wasn’t done.
The next day he bought a ticket for the $100 Million dollar Cash Extravaganza. And that’s
when they won a SECOND million bucks that month. Obviously, the Spencers were pretty pumped about
winning the lottery. If anything, this was just the beginning, because according to them,
they’re not gonna stop playing the lottery. Here’s what’s next!