Winning Ticket Sold in Cape Town
With just over 811,000 winners on Tuesday 19th February, the Capetonian was the only ticket holder to match all five main numbers – 14, 18, 21, 26 and 35 – plus the Powerball 5 to win the jackpot. Six players got close by matching all five main numbers, but the Powerball just evaded them, so they took home R240,331 each. It was revealed total sales for the Powerball draw, which captured the imagination of the South Africa, exceeded R74 million.
The historic win has been confirmed by Ithuba, the country’s official national lottery operator, who have now made a public appeal for the winner to come forward and claim their prize. They revealed: "The ticket was bought at an OK Mini Mark Tygerdal in Goodwood in Cape Town. The player used a manual selection method, with a ticket wager amount of R22.50. The winner has not yet made contact with Ithuba." They now have one year from the date of the draw to come forward and claim their prize.
Prior to the draw, Ithuba announced that they were completing 210 random acts of kindness to mirror the valuation of the estimated R210 million jackpot at that time. They handed out sums of money to players waiting to buy their Powerball tickets that could be used for petrol bills and grocery shopping, designed to give something back to their loyal players.
Ithuba Prepared for Fraudulent Claims
Khensani Mabuza, Ithuba’s corporate relations executive, said they remain hopeful that the winner will come forward sooner rather than later. She added shortly after the draw: "We did find that people will either check today or they'll go into a store and verify their tickets. So we'll find out hopefully by the afternoon, if not tomorrow."
Mabuza also revealed how they are prepared against fraudulent claims which could be made in the coming days by players trying claim the jackpot prize when they haven’t actually matched all six numbers. She continued: “We've got an incredibly advanced security system. The way that we verify our tickets is world class. We do have incidents of fraud but they're caught so quickly that it never goes so far that we were about to pay out to someone. It's picked up as soon as they try to claim. Mistakes happen where people come in and think they've won R20,000 but they've won R2,000."
When the winner comes forward, they will receive free counselling and financial services to help deal with the instant transition of becoming an overnight multi-millionaire. It is the first time the jackpot has been won since last November, and comfortably surpasses the R145 million prize won by a Mpumalanga player in August 2018 as the largest payout in the game’s 10-year history. There is no jackpot cap in place for Powerball, which is why the prize money was able to grow to a record amount.
