Main: John Cheeks, the D.C. man who sued Powerball over unpaid lottery winnings, is shown. (screengrab via WRC-TV); Inset:
A customer fills out a Powerball lottery ticket.(AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh).
A D.C. man is suing Powerball and the DC Lottery over a $340 million “mistake” that he says amounts to a civil conspiracy to not only cheat him out of lottery winnings, but to maximize lottery ticket sales for their own profits.
John Cheeks bought a Powerball ticket on Jan. 6, 2023, hoping to win the $320 million jackpot prize. According to Cheeks, he played numbers that were a personal combination of family birth dates and other significant numbers. Cheeks described himself as “not a regular” lottery player and said that he tends to play only for very large jackpots.
Cheeks said he did not tune in to see the live drawing on Jan. 7, but visited the Powerball website via his laptop on Jan. 8 and saw that his chosen numbers were listed as the winning combination. Those numbers, a screenshot of which can be seen below, stayed listed on the website for three days, according to Cheeks.
A screenshot of the winning Powerball numbers for Jan. 7, 2023, is shown. (image via court documents).
Despite the enormous jackpot, Cheeks described himself as having had a relatively low-key reaction to the win.
“I just politely called a friend,” Cheeks told NBC4. “I took a picture as he recommended, and that was it. I went to sleep.”
Cheeks said his response was due primarily to being immersed in his work at the time — he claims he is combating the housing crisis by creating financial alternatives for individuals who do not qualify for traditional mortgages in the Virginia, Maryland, and DC areas.
Cheeks said he tried to redeem his winning ticket at a licensed retailer on Jan. 10, only to discover that his numbers did not match those selected at the live drawing. He said he then went to the DC Office of Lottery and Gaming prize center and was told that he was not the winner.
Cheeks told NBC News that a claims staffer at the prize center told him, “Hey, this ticket is no good. Just throw it in the trash can.”
Cheeks said he questioned the staffer’s response with a stern look but was again told, “Oh yeah, just throw it away. You’re not gonna get paid.”
Instead, though, Cheeks put the ticket in a safe-deposit box, then contacted a lawyer and filed a lawsuit in Superior Court for the District of Columbia. The handwritten complaint was filed last November against Powerball, the Multi-State Lottery Association, and Taoti Enterprises. In the filing, Cheeks demanded all $320,600,000 of the jackpot plus $72,000 per day in interest payments.
Cheeks amended his complaint twice to add the allegations that the lottery defendants failed to include a public service announcement about the mistake, then “scrubbed [their] website” so as not to show his numbers listed as the winners.
In a second amended complaint filed on Jan. 31, this time through a retained attorney, Cheeks asserted claims for breach of contract, simple and gross negligence, negligent infliction of emotional distress, unfair trade practices, fraud, and civil conspiracy.
The complaint noted the “extreme emotional impact” a mistake about the massive jackpot would have on a winner:
Given the extreme emotional impact that a lottery of this size would have on a citizen of the District of Columbia, only an extreme deviation from the ordinary standard of care by the Defendants would allow for such an incredibly harmful mistake to be made, so that the Defendants could be said to be wanton, reckless, and consciously indifferent to the potential harm that might occur.
Cheeks further alleged that the defendants engaged in fraud and civil conspiracy by failing to tell the public even after the mistake was corrected, and instead, “continu[ing] to advertise the massive size of the jackpot to the public in order to earn more revenue for themselves on ticket sales.”
“After purportedly posting incorrect winning Powerball numbers to the D.C. Lottery website, the Defendants engaged in a civil conspiracy with each other to defraud the Plaintiff of his winnings by covering up the error and, most notably, by refusing to make a Public Service Announcement upon discovery of the purported error on or about January 9, 2023,” the filing said.
Cheeks also noted in his filing that “a similar error was made by the Iowa Lottery in a Powerball drawing in November 2023,” in which erroneous winning numbers were posted to the Iowa Lottery’s social media pages. In that case, though, Cheeks said Powerball, MUSL, and the Iowa Lottery acknowledged the mistake and paid prizes to ticket holders.
“However, in the instant matter, the winnings from the mistake were apparently much too large for the Defendants to acknowledge and honor,” Cheeks said via court filing. “Instead, the Defendants attempted to cover up the fact that they had posted the Plaintiff’s winning numbers on the D.C. Lottery and declined to alert the public.”
“This cover-up continued even after the Plaintiff alerted the Defendants to his winning ticket,” he said.
In an email to Law&Crime Monday, Cheeks’ attorney Richard W. Evans said the lawsuit “raises critical questions about the integrity and accountability of lottery operations and the safeguards — or lack thereof — against the type of errors that Powerball and the DC Lottery contend occurred in this case.”
Evans said that neither Powerball nor the DC Lottery made any kind of public service announcement about the alleged error, but simply continued to sell tickets toward the next Powerball Drawing.
“They never stopped play and offered to refund every player their money from the compromised drawing, if that’s what happened,” Evans said. “They just failed to pay my client his winnings (as stated by them for three days) and rolled that money into the next drawing, which was nationally and intentionally advertised as a bigger jackpot to entice more ticket sales and make exponentially more money, while failing to pay my client his stated winnings.”
Evans said the defendants’ behavior amounts to negligence at best and consumer fraud at worst. The attorney said his client had a valid ticket purchased from a licensed store, and that the lottery operators “were happy to take his money to play their game,” but, “are refusing to honor their own lottery system.” Evans added that now that the matter has escalated to litigation, he and his client “intend to collect every penny.”
“This lawsuit raises critical questions about the integrity and accountability of lottery operations and the safeguards — or lack thereof — against the type of errors that Powerball and the DC Lottery contend occurred in this case,” said Evans.
“This is not merely about numbers on a website,” Evans continued. “It’s about the reliability of institutions that promise life-changing opportunities, while heavily profiting in the process.”
The case is next scheduled for a conference in court on Feb. 23 before D.C. Superior Court Judge Milton C. Lee, a Barack Obama appointee.
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