A Tennessee man said he was “a little scared” after realising he was one of three winners in the world record $1.6bn (£1.1bn) U.S. lottery jackpot.
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Rebecca Hargrove, right, president and CEO of the Tennessee Lottery, announces that the winning Powerball ticket of the John and Lisa Robinson family is authentic Friday, Jan. 15, 2016, in Nashville, Tenn. The couple’s lump sum payout is about $327 million after buying the ticket for Wednesday night’s drawing at a grocery store in their west Tennessee hometown of Munford, population 6,000.
The Robinsons and their daughter hung out on the “Today” show set after their interview.
Asked what they would do with the windfall, Lisa Robinson said that aside from paying off a loan, they hadn’t had time.
Lisa wrote the numbers down, watched the drawing and triple-checked the numbers before startling John awake with the news.
The California victor of the jackpot has not yet come forward to collect his or her prize, according to Elias Domingez, spokesman for the California Lottery.
Neighbors say John and Lisa Robinson live in the small town of Munford. Their son, Adam, is an electrician, and their daughter, Tiffany, who lives nearby, is a recent college graduate.
WSMV reported the couple flew by private plane from NY to Nashville.
The woman’s daughter told the Los Angeles Times that the family “had not won the prize,” and reports suggesting otherwise had been a “misunderstanding based on a photo that was sent to her mother”.
A Tennessee couple have come forward with what they say is one of the three winning tickets for this week’s record US Powerball lottery jackpot, appearing with their lawyer on NBC’s Today program.
The ticket is worth $528,000,000 since there were two other winning tickets sold.
In Idaho, 143,265 tickets were winners of cash prizes ranging from $4 to $50,000.
One reason to be suspicious of the family’s claim: The Robinsons said that they were headed directly to the lottery commission after appearing on the Today Show.
The Robinsons said their attorney advised them to go on national TV first as a way of going public while still controlling the story.
“I really didn’t feel like stopping that night, but I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll stop, ‘” John said.
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