South Africa Probing Super Improbable 5-6-7-8-9-10 Lottery Draw
POWERBALL
REUTERS/Gary Cameron
South Africa’s regulators are looking into a suspiciously simple lottery draw. The consecutive numbers 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 were drawn in Tuesday’s national lottery, followed by 10 for the PowerBall. A whopping 20 players who guessed the correct series of numbers won 5.7 million rand, or about $370,000 U.S. dollars. Another 79 lucky people guessed the first five numbers in the series and missed the PowerBall, winning 6,283 rand, or around $400 USD. Unsurprisingly, many residents who didn’t win were enraged and took to social media to allege fraud. “Absolutely no way in hell that’s a coincidence,” one Twitter user wrote. South Africa’s National Lotteries Commission called the draw “unlikely,” and said it will examine the incident and report back. “Congratulations to tonight’s 20 winners of the PowerBall draw,” the national lottery tweeted out. “These numbers may be unexpected, but we see many players opt to play these sequences.”