ONE LUCKY family is believed to have struck Lotto gold twice on the same day.
National Lottery officials have confirmed that two Lotto Plus 2 winning tickets using the same numbers were bought in Letterkenny, Co Donegal, on Saturday. Each ticket scooped €250,000 in Saturday night’s draw.
The two tickets were bought within a few hundred metres of each other in two shops – Mac’s Mace on the High Road in Letterkenny and The Paper Post on the town’s Main Street – leading to suspicions the same family may have come into the double windfall by accident. Paula McEvoy of the National Lottery said it is most likely that one family used the same numbers and came up lucky twice. “They were two separate tickets. One was a €4 ticket and the other was a €12 ticket and both had the same numbers,” she said.
“Neither were quick picks so it rules out the possibility that one might have just been a lucky dip. Both people used these numbers on purpose. Chances are it could be a husband and wife or a mother and daughter but we can’t say just yet,” she said.
The lucky winner or winners have 90 days to claim their windfall but so far nobody has come forward to claim the cash, added Ms McEvoy. The winning numbers of the Lotto Plus 2, which automatically has a prize of €250,000, were 4, 12, 19, 21, 27 and 29.
She said another double-winning lotto ticket used significant numbers in the life of St Padre Pio to scoop their windfall.
The owner of The Paper Post, Noel Boyle, said the odds of two strangers from the same town using the same numbers must be huge. “We still don’t know who it is but isn’t it great for them? The chances of two completely different people doing the same numbers must be very slim,” he said.
Eunan McIntyre, owner of the Mac’s Mace, said the winning ticket owner could be anyone but he was delighted for them.