The one thing less likely than winning the lottery could be winning the lottery by accident after the improper numbers are printed.
Such was the case for some not-exactly-winners of the Iowa Lottery Powerball, who believed that they had won prizes starting from $4 to $200 but, in point of fact, had not. Fortunately, those in possession of those tickets will still have the ability to money in on the accidental wins.
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“The Powerball drawing was conducted accurately as scheduled Monday night, and official results were produced. However the Iowa Lottery’s redundant reporting procedures failed after the drawing,” the Iowa Lottery — said in a blog post on Wednesday. “It takes time to correct an error like that on the lottery’s statewide gaming system, which links all of the lottery terminals and self-service kiosks within the state. Lottery staff were in a position to complete the corrections by yesterday afternoon.”
The Iowa lottery chalked the mishap as much as human error and noted that would-be winners who had turned of their tickets when the inaccurate numbers were posted (which was from roughly 12:30 a.m. to 7:15 a.m. local time on Monday) could be compensated for the winnings they thought that they had won.
A staffer noticed the error around 7:15 a.m. and suspended the Powerball results on the lottery terminals, though a delay within the system statewide had the inaccurate numbers up for hours.
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The right winning numbers were posted at 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday. The one tickets affected by the error were Powerball tickets purchased within the state for Monday’s drawing.
It was estimated that 3,998 purchased Powerball tickets were declared winners.