Indianapolis: Woman Turns a $2 Lottery Ticket Into $190,442
- An Indianapolis woman won $190,442 on a $2 lottery ticket.
- She and her partner were headed to a fall festival in Mooresville.
- She told her partner to pull the car over immediately.
An Indianapolis woman won $190,442 on a $2 lottery ticket. It was a Max the Money ticket, one of the Hoosier Lottery’s Fast Play games, the lottery announced on September 30. The announcement did not name her.
On the way to a festival
She and her partner were headed to a fall festival in Mooresville. During the drive, she looked over her tickets and realized one of them might be the jackpot winner, according to the Hoosier Lottery.
She told her partner to pull the car over immediately. “I thought she wasn’t feeling well,” he said in the lottery’s announcement.
She was fine, just a little stunned, the lottery said.
The ticket came from Meijer Store #130, at 1424 W. Carmel Drive in Carmel. Max the Money is her favorite Fast Play game, the lottery said.
A winner, but how much?
After pulling over, the couple scanned the ticket. The Hoosier Lottery app confirmed it was a winner. The amount was another matter. Because the prize was tied to a rolling jackpot, they were not entirely sure how much they had won, according to the announcement.
The answer had to wait. The lottery’s Prize Payment Office was closed that day, so they went on Monday morning. That is when they learned the final amount and claimed the $190,442 prize, the lottery said.
Even then, she said, the win had not completely sunk in, according to the lottery.
Paying off the car and the house
The couple plans to use the money to pay off their car and their house, the announcement said.
How Max the Money works
Max the Money costs $2. Its rolling jackpot grows with every ticket sold. After this win, it reset to $5,000 and started climbing again, the lottery said.
As with other Fast Play games, tickets can be checked right away, at the store or in the lottery’s app. The jackpot amount is locked in when the ticket is bought, according to the game’s official page.
That page lists overall odds of 1 in 3.90 for winning any prize. The odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 240,000.
Lottery money has been making news elsewhere too. In Massachusetts, a new online lottery brought in $139.4 million in sales in its first weeks.
Featured image: A Hoosier Lottery booth at the Indiana State Fair in July 2023, used here as an illustrative image. Photo: Jaireeodell / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
