Pressing Wrong Button Leads To $50K Lotto Win For Bowie Man

PRINCE GEORGE'S COUNTY, MD — Hitting the wrong button on a self-serve Maryland Lottery vending machine ended up being the right move for a Bowie man who won $50,000 in the Powerball.

Nicknamed “Carlos Medina,” the anonymous player visited Royal Farms #244 in Laurel to buy food, charge up his electric vehicle and buy a few Powerball tickets for the Dec. 10 drawing. The auto business employee meant to buy $20 worth of tickets from the machine, but he accidentally hit the button that triggered the machine to cash him out and the machine printed a $20 voucher instead, according to the Maryland Lottery.

“Carlos Medina” scanned the voucher to put his $20 in credit back onto the machine, but inadvertently added another $20 to his order. Realizing he now had $40 worth of credit on the vending machine, “Carlos Medina” decided to buy four $10 Powerball quick-pick tickets and went home.

Around 2 a.m., he finished painting a bathroom in his home’s basement and remembered to check his Powerball tickets. First, he Googled, “Who won the Powerball?” using his phone. Seeing that no one won the jackpot that night, he checked the winning numbers on his phone against those on his tickets. One of those tickets ended up being worth $50,000.

The winner plans to put his prize in the bank and might use some of the funds for a vacation, according to the Maryland Lottery.