Recommended Posts

A New Hampshire man is the winner of a $2.1 Megabucks lottery jackpot even though the lucky ticket wasn't the one he intended to buy.

Scott Bennett, 48, of Hillsborough, went into the Circle K convenience store on Dec. 19 and asked the clerk for one Tri-State Megabucks ticket and one Lucky for Life ticket. The clerk mistakenly sold him two Megabucks tickets.

He never got the Lucky for Life ticket, but that probably doesn't matter now, because one of the Megabucks tickets was a big winner.

At a press conference on Friday, the Bennett family - minus Scott, who was at work - appeared to accept the prize.

Cathy Bennett, Scott's 47-year-old wife, said this Christmas "there might be a few extra presents under the tree."

She described the experience as "surreal."

"It's very overwhelming but I think once everything settles we'll enjoy and take the time to enjoy it and decide what the future's going to hold," she said, according to ABC News affiliate WMUR TV in Manchester, N.H.

The Bennetts have three children. It was their son, Travis, 20, who set things in motion. He left a note saying a winning ticket had been sold in their neighborhood and urging his father to check the numbers on his ticket.

"I went downstairs, and he was sitting there with the ticket in one hand and the New Hampshire Lottery website on the computer, just staring at both of them," Cathy Bennett said, recalling her husband at the computer. "We must have checked them about 15 times. We really truly didn't believe it."

When they found out they'd won, they called a family meeting and ordered in Chinese food.

The Bennetts opted to take the lump sum payment of about $1.3 million, and will use it to pay down debt, remodel the kitchen in their recently purchased Victorian home and fund their children's college education.

more

Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1127650-man-accidentally-wins-state-lottery/
Share on other sites

lol damn you americans get raped when its winnings time. So glad we have places here in Canada to get back the money we are robbed of if we win over there

A New Hampshire man is the winner of a $2.1 Megabucks lottery jackpot even though the lucky ticket wasn't the one he intended to buy.

So you're saying it was the second ticket that won and not the one he normally got?

Must have kept them in separate pockets so he knew which was which I suppose. :shifty:

If he chose to get it all at once, That's what left after the government takes their free money.

Nope, that is before taxes. The full (advertised) amount is assuming you get it paid out over 20+yrs. Regardless of which option you take you then lose 25% to federal taxes and then more to local (state) taxes. They are probably looking at getting a little more than $850,000 after it's all accounted for

That may be taking dedication to his job a bit too far.

Why? its only 1.3 million. I know people with way more than that in their banks and they still work. 1.3 mill couldn't even buy you a house in some places. My friend just got a house in BC, a 4 bedroom house cost him almost 3 mill

i dont get get how you can accidentally win a ticket youve won... doesnt make any sense

The "accident" was that he got two MegaBucks tickets when he asked for only one. He was only supposed to have one MegaBucks ticket...maybe that one wouldn't have been the winner. That's the point.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Posts

    • That is $130 more than I paid for my 4TB a year ago. How is this a deal?
    • JetBrains' new AI-first 'IDE' JetBrains Air is now on Windows by David Uzondu JetBrains has announced that JetBrains Air, its Agentic Development Environment (ADE) is now available for download on Windows x64 and ARM. You might not be familiar with JetBrains Air. It's this new desktop app that the company launched back in March 2026 to let developers hand off tasks to AI agents instead of writing every line manually. You can see it as more of an Agentic Development Environment (ADE) rather than a traditional Integrated Development Environment (IDE). The latter builds its features around a central text editor, while the former arranges everything around the AI agent itself. Here's how JetBrains describes it: Air was born from the ashes of Fleet, an experimental editor that the company quietly killed in December 2025 after realizing that competing directly with VS Code was a losing battle. The company repurposed Fleet's lightweight, modern architecture to build Air, transforming a basic code editor into a workspace for running multiple AI agents. When Air launched, it was only available for macOS. It wasn't until earlier this month that Linux users got a chance to play with the software. Now that Air is on Windows, you can do things like map out a complex feature in Plan mode and watch an AI write the implementation plan to a markdown file before writing any code. You can iterate on this plan, add references to specific classes or files, and choose whether to run the agent locally or inside an isolated Git worktree. Running agents in parallel means you can have Claude refactor a database schema in one branch while Codex writes tests in another, leaving you free to do other important things. You can even set up a pipeline where Claude writes the code, and Codex reviews it. At the moment, Air is free. If you have a JetBrains AI Pro or Ultimate subscription, you get full access to the built-in agents, though there's also the option to Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) to run APIs from Anthropic, OpenAI, or Google. If you're interested, here are the download links for both x64 and ARM64.
    • Depending how you’re wiring it internally, but try to put it inside conduit, that way in the future you can more easily replace cables, compared to running inside studs alone At least cat6a too
    • I bet Meta has lots of info on you anyway, gathered by other means. And Google, and Microsoft, and every other tech giant. If you use some form of modern electronic device, they own you already...
  • Recent Achievements

    • Reacting Well
      NovaEdgeX earned a badge
      Reacting Well
    • Week One Done
      NovaEdgeX earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Year In
      BA the Curmudgeon earned a badge
      One Year In
    • Conversation Starter
      rosiecharles earned a badge
      Conversation Starter
    • First Post
      KMilenkoski1202 earned a badge
      First Post
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      530
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      264
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      149
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      97
    5. 5
      macoman
      60
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!