A Virgnia man has hit the jackpot not once, not twice, but 20 times after buying winning lottery tickets all with the same numbers.
Fekru Hirpo, of Alexandria, Virginia, purchased 20 identical tickets with the same number combination from a petrol station in Arlington. He picked the four-digit combination 2-5-2-7 on a spur of the moment decision.
He told lottery officials he made the last minute decision to go all in on the same number combination for the 'Pick 4' game. Hirpo explained he "doesn't usually play with so many tickets containing identical numbers, but something just told him to do it", according to a news release from Virginia Lottery.
The winning tickets came from the Pick 4 nightly draw on Wednesday, March 8. Each winning ticket bagged him a prize of $5,000 - meaning that when the 20 winning tickets were combined, he won a staggering $100,000.
The lottery have said Hirpo has "no immediate plans" to use his winnings. Previous Pick 4 winners have used the money for an array of things - whether it's paying off a mortgage, taking care of family, or investing the money.
The odds of winning the Pick 4 game even just once are one in 10,000 according to their website. Pick 4 tickets range from 50 cents to $1, allowing players to pick any four numbers between 0000 and 9999.
In March, another Virginia man took home $300,000 from a scratch card just three years after he won $125,000 from a Pick 4 draw. Raymond Harrington, from Virginia Beach, decided to test his luck while at a Rite Aid store in Norfolk, VA.
He told lottery officials the scratch cards were "calling out" to him, so he bought a Diamond Bonus Crossword ticket. He thought he'd won around $200, but a closer look showed he had won the top prize of $300,000.
Previously a Virginia woman, Lucinda Britt, won a total of 41 times on Pick 4 using the same number combination - her birth year. The Norfolk resident bought dozens of tickets, using her birth year as the number combination for each one - 1-9-7-2.
On May 3, 2022, her tactic paid off as it was drawn as the winning combination. She told lottery officials: "I was so happy my leg was shaking!"
She won the top prize, $5,000, on 36 of her tickets, as well as another £2,500 on five tickets she wagered 50/50 n.
In total, her winnings came to $193,000, according to lottery officials. But it wasn't her first taste of victory. In 2016, Britt shared a $1 million prize with her best friend.
Another Virginia woman, Elisa Chapman, was so excited about her Pick 4 win she said she "ran outside in my pyjamas to tell my daughter".
She also used the same four-digit combination, 1-4-0-6, across all 54 of her tickets. Forty tickets were bet on her hitting those numbers in "exact order", while another 14 were for the numbers in any order.
In the end, Elisa walked away with forty top prizes of $5,000, and 14 prizes of $2,600 - meaning she took home a total of $236,400.
