$30m Lotto winners: King size bed, charities and travel on the cards

Lotto NZ has confirmed the $30 million Powerball first division prize has been claimed by a Wellington family, despite being bought on MyLotto by a player registered as being from Carterton.

The family syndicate, who want to remain anonymous, are occasional players who buy a ticket together whenever the jackpot is over $20 million.

"When I bought the ticket, my daughter-in-law transferred their portion of the ticket to me straight away, she told me she ‘didn’t want to owe me anything,'" the man told Lotto.

Later that night the family saw on the news that Powerball had been won in Carterton, so didn't think to check their ticket.

“I don’t usually check my tickets until I’m going to buy another one, so it could have been more than a month before I even looked,” the man said.

He was checking his emails the next day when he saw one from MyLotto customer support.

"It said I had won a major prize, but I didn’t know what that meant."

He decided to wait till the family was together before checking their winnings.

"I messaged them and told them to come round. Whatever we had won, I wanted us to find out together as a family."

Before logging in to the MyLotto app, the family talked about what they may have won and what they'd do with the money.

"The man’s son decided that if they had won a few thousand, he’d treat himself and his wife to a king size bed, little did he know he’d be able to buy a fair few king size beds after they checked their ticket," Lotto said in a statement.

The family then watched as the animated draw played, and the numbers on their ticket circled one by one. Suddenly they heard the winning music, and their ticket was stamped "$30,166,667" at the top.

"We really didn’t think it was real – why would you? We were so shocked and just kept staring at each other saying 'what?' 'How?'

"How could it be us when the news said the winner was from Carterton?" he said.

The man’s son checked his dad’s settings, which had him down in Carterton.

"All I can think is that I accidentally put Carterton when I signed up to MyLotto."

The family are still coming to terms with their win, but plan to keep themselves grounded, all still heading to work this week despite knowing they're multi-millionaires.

"We’ve lived a modest life, and we don’t plan to change our lives drastically. We know what it’s like to go through hard times, so this win will make all of our lives that bit easier."

"You always dream of winning Powerball, and in your head, you’ve mapped out what you’ll do, but it’s so different when you actually win.

"We’re going to do some renovations and we know that we’d like to do some travel as a family. It’s also important to us to help the charities and causes that are close to our hearts, so we’ll do that down the track too."

The huge prize is the largest prize won by a single ticket since August 2023, when a Paraparaumu couple won $37.125 million.

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