A teenager apprentice electrician checked his ticket three times before believing he had won $4.2 million

A 19-year-old apprentice electrician from Riverdale read on the Maryland Lottery website that someone had won the Multi-Match jackpot at the store where he buys his tickets. He then went home, pulled out his own ticket, and compared it with the numbers.

Then he checked it twice more.

"I was dumbfounded. I just kept checking," the winner said. "I was like, 'Wow!'"

The ticket was worth $4.2 million. He claimed it September 8 at lottery headquarters in Baltimore and chose to remain anonymous. After the third time he checked he called in his mother, father, and sister and showed them the ticket.

"I just buy them sometimes," he said of the Multi-Match game. He told the lottery he plays Multi-Match because of its odds and because it is sold only in Maryland, and that he picks up a few tickets every other week at Town Center Market at 4705 Queensbury Road, the store that sold the winner. Town Center Market gets a $4,200 bonus for selling the winning ticket.

He graduated from high school a year ago and has been training as an electrician. He said he plans to buy his family a house. "It can open the door," he said.

The odds he mentioned are real

Multi-Match costs $2 and gives a player three lines of six numbers, one chosen or quick-picked and two generated. Six numbers are drawn from 43 on Mondays and Thursdays. Because a ticket carries three lines, the jackpot chance per ticket is 1 in 2,032,152, against 1 in 6,096,454 for any single line.

That is about 144 times better odds than the Powerball jackpot. The overall chance of winning something on Multi-Match is about 1 in 8.5, helped by a $2 prize for matching three numbers on a line and another for matching five across all three lines.

$4.2 million over 25 years annuity, or $2.2 million cash option now

The advertised jackpot is an annuity paid in 25 equal installments, which works out to $168,000 a year. The cash option was estimated at $2.2 million before taxes, about 52% of the headline. The lottery has not said which one he took.

Maryland gives a jackpot winner 182 days from the drawing to claim and 60 days from validation to elect the cash payment.

The jackpot had been building since April 16, when an Ellicott City player won $570,000. It reached $4.2 million by August 31, the largest Multi-Match prize since a Westminster player won $5.1 million in May 2022. That night 56,762 other players won between $2 and $1,000, including 39 tickets at $1,000.

The jackpot reset to $500,000 for the next drawing.

Sources

Maryland Lottery: Riverdale lottery player, 19, a millionaire after hitting Multi-Match jackpot

Maryland Lottery: $4.2 million Multi-Match jackpot winner sold in Riverdale

Maryland Lottery: Multi-Match prize structure and probability