A lucky man from Albuquerque, New Mexico, won the grand prize from the popular game Lotto America recently. The man, who became the first New Mexico Lottery player to secure a jackpot from the game, won the grand prize from the draw on November 4, 2023. Identified as Neil Cochran, the lucky winner visited the New Mexico Lottery headquarters earlier this week to collect the grand prize of $3.52 million, won from Lotto America.
To win the grand prize, Cochran guessed correctly all five white balls with numbers 8, 11, 23, 47, 48 and Star Ball number 4. He purchased the winning ticket at Speedway #9093 at 6570 Paradise Blvd NW in Albuquerque. Since there was no other winning jackpot ticket from the draw on November 4, the lucky man collected the whole grand prize himself.
After discovering that he was the winner of the jackpot prize, Cochran told his mother. The woman initially thought that he and his girlfriend were pulling a prank on her, saying that she didn’t believe them. Undoubtedly, she changed her mind when she saw her son holding the oversized check with the $3.52 million jackpot sum written on it.
The Winner Picked the Numbers Himself
Visiting Speedway ahead of the draw on November 4, Cochran was offered by a store employee to participate in the lottery. The employee remembered the lucky winner who told them that Lotto America has better odds than Mega Millions and Powerball. Cochran was further attracted to the game by the fact that the ticket cost was only $1.
Once he decided to play, the lucky man did not use randomly generated numbers by Quick Pick. Instead, Cochran had numbers in mind that he picked himself. Besides Lotto America, the man purchased tickets for Mega Millions and Powerball games too. True to his gut feeling that he would be the winner, Cochran used the same numbers for all three games.
Earlier this week, the Powerball jackpot survived the draw on Wednesday. The latest draw of the game didn’t have a grand prize winner, nor a winner that collected a second-tier prize of $1 million for guessing correctly all white balls. With hours left until the drawing on Saturday, the Powerball jackpot is expected to hit $220 million or $101.2 million in cash value.