{"id":601700,"date":"2026-09-16T03:08:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T03:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/601700\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T03:08:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T03:08:10","slug":"what-the-heck-two-families-shriek-lose-sleep-after-5m-powerball-wins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/601700\/","title":{"rendered":"‘What the heck’: Two families shriek, lose sleep after $5m Powerball wins"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two families<\/a> from Wellington and Richmond have spoken of their disbelief after winning $5 million each from Lotto’s $10 million must be won draw<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nobody struck the Division 1 jackpot on Saturday night \u2014 the final one to include 10 balls before moving to the new 14-ball format<\/a> \u2014 therefore the jackpot rolled down to second division and was shared between the families. <\/p>\n

The first to claim their $5.01 million from Powerball first and second division \u2014 including another $13,353 from Lotto second division \u2014 was a family syndicate from Richmond, near Nelson. <\/p>\n

The couple said they first told their adult daughter, who didn’t believe them.<\/p>\n

“She said, ‘Nah it\u2019ll only be $5000 or something, give me a look,’ and took the phone from me,” said the dad. <\/p>\n

“There was a lot of shrieking when we all realised it was real,” said the mum.<\/p>\n

They said the extended family would get together soon to celebrate their win and discuss their futures.<\/p>\n

“At the moment we\u2019re thinking it will go towards paying off mortgages or maybe new homes,” she said.<\/p>\n

The second winners were a Wellington family who found out about their win on Sunday evening.<\/p>\n

“We were on the sofa when I checked the ticket. When I heard the winning music, I looked at my wife and said, ‘Oh my god, we won’. <\/p>\n

“She didn\u2019t believe me at first, and to be honest I had doubts too, because we hadn’t matched all six Lotto numbers.”<\/p>\n

“We did a bit of searching online and realised it had rolled down, and we were one of two winners.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was such a shock, all I could say was ‘what the heck?'” said the man.<\/p>\n

The couple struggled to sleep that night and have not yet decided what they will do with their win.<\/p>\n

“We\u2019re going to take some time to figure it all out. It still doesn\u2019t feel real,” he said.<\/p>\n

The two lucky families were the final winners of the 10-ball Powerball game before the new 14-ball game begins.<\/p>\n

The first draw under the format would be tonight<\/a>, where the jackpot was $5 million. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two families from Wellington and Richmond have spoken of their disbelief after winning $5 million each from Lotto’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":601701,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,244,2224,40,38,41,39,52],"class_list":["post-601700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-personal-finance","tag-tasman","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-wellington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601700\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/601701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}