Seven-Time Lottery Winner Offers Tips to Powerball Winner | ABC News

Julie Leach, Fiberglass Factory Employee, Wins $310.5 Million Powerball

A fiberglass factory employee in Michigan is $310.5 million richer — which is rich enough, she has decided, to quit her job.

Julie Leach, 50, was working an overnight shift at Aquatic Bathware as a supervisor on what she called a "nasty, dirty job" when she found out while on a break at McDonald's that she had won last Wednesday's Powerball drawing.

"I quit automatically. I was done," she said, laughing, at a news conference Tuesday.

Leach purchased the winning ticket at a Shell gas station in her hometown of Three Rivers — a community in southwestern Michigan about 30 miles south of Kalamazoo — along with a cup of coffee around 6:30 p.m. She then headed into her job at the factory, where she has worked for almost 23 years.

She said she was "having a really bad night at work" before she stepped out and checked her ticket.

It was over a Cheeseburger Value Meal that Leach compared her ticket to the winning numbers, looking in disbelief as each number matched up, she told NBC's Kevin Tibbles after the press conference.

When she later found out she was the only winner, "I started shaking."

Holding the oversized check from the Michigan Lottery, she said: "It's crazy. Just unreal."

Leach regularly buys about 20 dollars' worth of lottery tickets, nabbing extra tickets when the pot gets really large. She said she also participates in a lottery pool at work.

But she "never thought it would happen" — that she would actually win.

The winning numbers were 21, 39, 40, 55 and 59, with a Powerball of 17.

Powerball Winner

Lisa and John Robinson

January 13, 2016

Tennessee

Tennessee Powerball Jackpot Winner Claims Prize

After a whirlwind trip to New York City for a visit with The Today Show, the Tennessee 

winners of one-third of the historic, world record-breaking Powerball jackpot of $1.58 

BILLION arrived at Tennessee Lottery headquarters in Nashville today to claim their share of

 t

he prize, an incredible $528.8 million.

Lisa and John Robinson of Munford, along with their daughter Tiffany and dog Abby, were 

greeted at the door by Tennessee Lottery President and CEO Rebecca Hargrove.

"I am a little overwhelmed and excited," Lisa Robinson said during the afternoon press 

conference. "We just wanted a little piece of the pie, but instead we got a big piece!"

The jackpot ticket was one of three Powerball tickets to match all six numbers drawn on 

Wednesday, January 13, 2016, to win the $1.58 billion jackpot. This is the second Powerball 

jackpot winner in Tennessee in a row and the fifth Powerball jackpot winner in the state.

The Robinsons chose to receive the lump sum cash payment of $327,835,000 rather than the 

annuitized amount of $528.8 million. The retailer location received $25,000 for selling the 

winning jackpot ticket.

Powerball Winner

Julie Leach

September 30, 2015

Michigan
.

Three Rivers Woman Wins $310.5 Million Powerball Jackpot

The dream of being a Lottery jackpot winner has come true for a Three Rivers woman who won a $310.5 million Powerball jackpot from the Michigan Lottery.

Julie Leach, 50, matched all of the winning numbers drawn in the Sept. 30 Powerball drawing: 21-39-40-55-59 and the Powerball, 17, to win the enormous jackpot. Leach's big win marks the third time a Michigan player has won the Powerball jackpot. The $310.5 million jackpot is the second-largest ever won in the state.

"I've played the Lottery for a long time and have dreamed of this day, but I never thought it would actually come," said Leach. "I have been in shock since I checked my ticket Thursday morning, and I don't know if it will ever wear off." Leach bought her winning ticket about 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Three Rivers West Shell gas station, located at 1223 West Michigan Avenue in Three Rivers. Three Rivers is about 30 miles south of Kalamazoo.

"My boyfriend told me I should stop and buy some Powerball tickets on my way to work because the jackpot was so huge," said Leach. "I stopped at the Shell station and bought 10 Powerball plays for $20. When I got back to my car I tossed the tickets in my console and went to work."

During her lunch break about 1 a.m., Leach was waiting for her food in a drive through lane when she remembered she had purchased tickets for the Powerball drawing.

"It seemed like it was taking forever to get my food, so I pulled out my cellphone and checked my Powerball tickets," said Leach. "First, I checked to see if I had matched the Powerball number. When I saw I had matched it, I started checking the numbers on that line one-by-one. When I saw I had matched three, I remember thinking: 'Well that's pretty cool, I won like $200.'

"When I saw that I had matched all five numbers and the Powerball, I just couldn't believe it. I must have checked and re-checked my ticket 10 times."

When Leach returned to work, she quietly asked a couple of co-workers to double check her ticket.

"Both of my co-workers thought I was playing a joke on them," said Leach. "One of my co-workers was sure it was a hoax, but after a few minutes he said 'Get the hell out of here, you're a winner!' That is exactly what I did, I clocked out for the final time of my 20-year career and went home."

Once home, she woke up her boyfriend of 36 years, Vaughn Avery, to tell him the life changing news.

"I was in a deep sleep and had actually been dreaming that we had won the Lottery with the tickets I told her to buy," said Avery. "As soon as I heard her voice I knew something was going on, but I didn't think she was going to tell me she had won Powerball."

"Vaughn couldn't believe what I was telling him," said Leach. "We sat in the living room of our house for hours laughing and crying, trying to process what was happening and how our lives had changed. We would have been pleased with $500,000 or $1 million, to win $310.5 million is unbelievable.

"About 4:30 a.m., Vaughn said he needed to get ready to go to work, and I told him he was never working again."

Next the couple shared the good news with their two children and their families.

Leach chose to receive her $310.5 million jackpot as a one-time lump sum payment of $197.4 million, rather than an annuity. After tax withholdings, she will receive about $140 million.

With her winnings, Leach plans to pay off her bills, purchase a new home for herself and Avery, as well as a new home for each of their children, and travel with her family.

"To know that we will be debt free is an incredible feeling," Leach said. "Vaughn and I have worked so hard all of our lives to provide for our family and now we can all relax and enjoy spending time together."

"It's wonderful to know that my kids will be taken care of and won't have to work like I did. They'll be able to enjoy life, and that makes me incredibly happy," she said wiping away a tear.

 

Could you game the system and guarantee yourself a $1.5 billion Powerball jackpot?

Here's the theory: At $2 a ticket and 1 in 292 million odds, you could seemingly buy every Powerball combination for "just" $584 million -- and still walk away with a massive profit.

The lump-sum jackpot payment is estimated to be about $930 million. That alone would give you a handsome $346 million profit if you bought every ticket. And since there are $92 million in lower-tier prizes, you'd win all of those too. And by flooding the system with all those tickets you purchased, the lump-sum value of the jackpot would rise by $200 million -- which you'd theoretically win back.
That's a grand total of $1.2 billion in winnings, $638 million of which would be profit.

The best part: You can deduct the value of your gambling losses up to the amount of your winnings. So all but two bucks of what you spent on tickets would be tax-deductible. Effectively that deduction means you'd wipe out any federal taxes owed on the first $584 million of your winnings.
But don't head over to the ATM to withdraw $584 million. There are two big holes in this theory.
Related: Why you keep playing the lottery
1) You probably would have to share the ticket
There were 440 million tickets sold leading up to the previous drawing. Though there will probably be more tickets sold this time around, let's assume for the moment that Wednesday's drawing attracts the same amount of interest as the last one.
By buying every combination, you'd guarantee yourself a victory, but you'd have just a 22% chance of buying the only winning ticket and keeping that jackpot all to yourself, according to Victor Matheson, professor of economics and accounting at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts.

You'd have a better chance (33%) of sharing with one other person or even two other people (25%). You'd also have a 12% chance of sharing it with three people and a 6% chance of splitting your winnings with four others.

All it would take is one other winner to make your $584 million investment unprofitable.
Don't let the fact that there were no winners during the last drawing fool you. That was unusual, given the amount of interest. With 440 million tickets sold, there was a little more than a 77% chance that at least one person would have won the Powerball last week, Matheson said.
2) You couldn't possibly buy that many lottery tickets
You have to buy Powerball tickets in person. That's a lot of transactions.
If you were able to buy one ticket every second, it would still take you more than nine years to buy every combination. And that's optimistic: You have to ensure that you buy every number just once -- not just 292 million quick-picks.

Even if you could deploy an army of people to buy all those tickets for you, it's still extremely unlikely that you'd be able to buy every ticket.
"Think about how many lottery ticket stations there are nationwide and how busy they've been, running nonstop," said Matheson. "Even still, they were only able to sell 440 million tickets" over the course of three days.
Buying every lottery combination has actually been tried once.
In February 1992, an Australian consortium tried to corner a $24 million Virginia Lotto jackpot. But the group was only able to purchase 2.4 million of the 7 million combinations before time ran out.
So though it's technically feasible to guarantee yourself a lottery victory, realistically, it's not.\\

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