Dylan Nolte
The second prize tier pays out to roughly four or five tickets in a normal draw. That night it paid 110. Expected count computed from the game's own odds of 1 in 11,688,053.
What happened, and when
Powerball's second prize goes to a ticket matching all five main numbers but missing the Powerball. The odds are 1 in 11,688,053.[3] On a busy night, four or five people manage it.
On 30 March 2005, the count came back at 110.[2]
The head of the Multi-State Lottery Association was woken at half past eleven. His team started working through the obvious explanations. Had a television show broadcast the numbers? A soap opera? Had someone got at the machines?
The winning numbers were 22, 28, 32, 33, 39, and Powerball 42.
Twenty five times what the game expects
Look at the chart at the top of this page. That is not a busy night. That is a number the game has no mechanism to produce by chance.
The payout was more than 19 million dollars nobody had budgeted for. Eighty nine tickets took 100,000 dollars each. Twenty one had paid the extra dollar for the multiplier and took 500,000.
A lottery can absorb that. There is a reserve for exactly this. But it needs an explanation, and fraud was the sensible first guess.
Where the numbers actually came from
Wonton Food in Queens, New York, is the largest fortune cookie manufacturer in the United States. Its slips carry a fortune on one side and a set of lucky numbers on the other.
One of those sets read 22, 28, 32, 33, 39, 40.[2]
Five of those six came out of the barrel. The sixth, 40, was not the Powerball, which was 42. So everyone playing the cookie matched exactly five and missed the last one, which is the definition of second prize.
Now sit with the near miss. Had that slip printed 42 instead of 40, all 110 tickets would have matched the jackpot. The top prize was around 25 million dollars. Split 110 ways, that is roughly 227,000 dollars each, before tax.
One digit on a piece of paper in a biscuit factory decided whether 110 people got a life changing sum or a nice surprise.
Why that story matters on a Tuesday in Australia
Every one of those 110 people thought they were playing a private set of numbers. Something personal, from a biscuit they happened to open. They were playing the same six digits as thousands of strangers and had no way of knowing.
Your odds of winning are fixed by the maths. Nothing changes them. But how much you collect if you win depends entirely on how many other people picked what you picked.
That is the one place where your choice genuinely affects your outcome, and it has nothing to do with predicting the draw. Birthdays are the obvious trap: they cap at 31 and cluster low, so a birthday line is a line thousands of others are holding. Our hot and cold numbers review covers the research on which numbers crowds actually favour.
The bit no other Australian site will tell you
Everything above applies to any player anywhere. This part only applies to you.
US lottery prizes are taxed at source. A United States resident has 24 per cent withheld. A non-resident, which is what an Australian is, has 30 per cent withheld, and it is generally the final US tax rather than a prepayment.[1]
Plenty of countries have treaty relief from that. The IRS publishes the list. It includes the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany, Japan and South Africa, among about twenty others.
Australia is not on it.
| Winner's country | US withholding | Keeps, on a US$10m prize |
|---|
| Ireland | Treaty exempt | US$10,000,000 |
| United Kingdom | Treaty exempt | US$10,000,000 |
| Australia | 30 per cent | US$7,000,000 |
Same ticket. Same numbers. Same draw. Three million dollars of difference, decided by which passport is holding it.
State tax may apply on top, depending on where the matching ticket was bought, and some states take nothing. Australia does not tax lottery windfalls, so nothing further is deducted once the money arrives. The entire question is what the United States keeps before it gets here.
And the billboard number is not the prize either. The advertised figure is a 30 year annuity, each payment five per cent larger than the last. The cash value is what the pool holds today. On the record 2.04 billion dollar Powerball in November 2022, the cash value was 997.6 million, or 49 per cent of the headline. The winner took the cash.
What this does to the numbers on this site
Our generator will happily give you a line for USA Power Lotto, shaped by the last 90 real draws. What it cannot do, and what nothing can do, is tell you how many other people are holding that line.
That is why the shape modes on this site never restrict which numbers can appear. Narrowing the pool to a fashionable set would be the fortune cookie problem in miniature: everyone steered toward the same handful of numbers, and a shared prize if it ever landed.
Every number stays in play, every time. The shape changes the mix, not the menu.
The straight version
Everyone in this story behaved sensibly. The players picked numbers from a biscuit, which is as good a method as any. The officials suspected fraud, which was the right first thought. The game paid out.
And it proves something no argument does: your numbers are not yours. Thousands of people are holding the same line right now, and on the night it matters that is the only thing about your choice that makes any difference.
None of which changes the odds. A 1 in 292,201,338 shot[3] stays a 1 in 292,201,338 shot whether it came from a cookie, a birthday or our own generator. Pick numbers you like. Just know that if the whole country likes them too, you will be splitting the prize with them, and that the United States will take its 30 per cent before you split anything.
Correct as at 15 August 2026. Odds are computed from the published Powerball matrix of 5 from 69 plus 1 from 26. Tax treatment is general information and not advice; a large win warrants a US tax professional. USA Power Lotto is the Australian name for the US Powerball draw, sold here by The Lottery Office. We are not the operator and we do not sell entries. Lottery play is for adults 18+.
References
- The withholding rate for a foreign person is set by the US tax code and stated in the IRS instructions for Forms W-2G and 5754: gambling winnings paid to a foreign person are generally subject to 30 per cent withholding and reported on Form 1042-S. The list of treaty countries exempt from it appears in IRS Publication 515 under Gambling winnings, Income Code 28. Australia is absent from that list. ↩
- The 30 March 2005 draw was reported by the Associated Press and investigated at length by The New York Times in May 2005, which established the fortune cookie link and the payout figure. Wonton Food confirmed the slips came from its factory. ↩ ↩
- Second prize odds of 1 in 11,688,053 and jackpot odds of 1 in 292,201,338 are computed here directly from the game matrix rather than quoted. ↩ ↩