Siblings win  million in Virginia’s Mega Millions lottery

Siblings

Two siblings from Virginia won $1 million in the lottery.

Photo by Giorgio Trovato via Unsplash

A Virginia woman couldn’t believe her brother when he told her they had won a seven-figure lottery ticket.

“He told me we won, and I said, ‘Come on, today isn’t April Fools,'” Mary Crider told Virginia Lottery officials.

But the Danville siblings, who often team up to play Mega Millions when the jackpot exceeds $200 million, really received a prize of 1 million dollars– according to a press release from the Virginia Lottery on Friday, September 30.

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The brother and sister will share one million dollars. Virginia Lottery

One of the tickets they bought at a store in Danville matched the first five numbers drawn in the Sept. 20 drawing, according to the lottery. They only missed the Mega Ball number.

The odds of matching the first five numbers are 1 in 12,607,306, according to the lottery.

“I had to look at the ticket a few times because I couldn’t believe it,” said Jesse Perkins, Crider’s brother, according to a lottery release.

The couple used Easy Pick, allowing a computer to randomly generate the numbers on the ticket, the lottery said.

Their ticket was one of two in the country to win the $1 million prize in the drawing, according to the lottery. No one claimed the jackpot of approximately $277 million.

The siblings will split the $1 million prize, the lottery said. Perkins said she plans to donate some of her winnings to charity, while Kreider said she wants to use some of her winnings for travel.

According to the lottery, the store where they purchased the ticket will receive a $10,000 bonus.

Danville is about 70 miles southeast of Roanoke, near the Virginia-North Carolina state line.

Bailey Aldridge is a reporter covering North and South Carolina news in real time. She earned a degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.