US lottery crowns wrong winners in publishing error

A lottery has mistakenly published the wrong winning numbers for a game — but officials say the false ‘winners’ will get to keep the cash.

The correct winning numbers for Monday’s draw. Picture: Iowa Lottery.

A US lottery has confused punters by mistakenly publishing the wrong winning numbers for a game — but officials say the temporary ‘winners’ will get to keep the cash.

Iowa Lottery said a “human reporting error” resulted in the wrong numbers being shared on the statewide gaming system, lottery website and winning numbers telephone line for Monday night’s Powerball draw.

It’s understood that, after the draw, two people in separate locations entered the results to be recorded on the statewide gaming system, which connects to every lottery terminal and self-service kiosk in the state. But some of the numbers were “entered incorrectly,” officials said.

Iowa Lottery shared the wrong Powerball numbers on Monday. Picture: Iowa Lottery.

The incorrect numbers were posted to the lottery’s website at about 12:30am on Tuesday, local time, and it was about 7:15am before anyone noticed the mistake, took down the numbers and halted payments, the lotto explained.

Lottery officials worked until 3:30pm on Tuesday to correct their error and resume cashing winning tickets.

The lottery said the incorrect numbers resulted in prizes ranging from between $6 (US$4) and $300 (US$200), but didn’t say how many people had won.

Anyone who got up early and cashed in a false winning ticket will be able to keep the money, officials said.

The incorrect numbers were up for about seven hours.

A $538 million (US$355 million) jackpot was up for grabs in Monday night’s Powerball, but wasn’t won.

With the correct numbers, 3998 people who bought Powerball tickets in Iowa won smaller prizes, also of between $6 and $300, for a total of $36,999 (US$24,382).

The real winning numbers from Monday night’s Powerball drawing were 2-21-38-61-66 and Powerball 12.

Lottery officials apologised for the mistake.

“While last night’s Powerball drawing was correctly conducted, an error caused incorrect winning numbers for the drawing to be reported on the Iowa Lottery’s statewide gaming system, website and winning numbers telephone line,” a statement said.

“We at the Iowa Lottery sincerely apologise for the interruption,” a separate statement added on Wednesday after fixing the mistake.

The error did not affect any other lottery drawings, the Iowa Lottery said.