North Carolina Powerball Player Who Missed Billion-Dollar Jackpot by One Number Claims $2 Million, Plans to Buy Home

Daryl Steinhoff, a 68-year-old Clayton, North Carolina, resident, said he will use part of his $2 million Powerball prize to purchase a home after matching all five white balls but missing the red Powerball in an early-September drawing.

Steinhoff said he used family numbers and bought the Power Play option to double a $1 million prize to $2 million. He claimed the prize Thursday at the North Carolina Education Lottery headquarters in Raleigh and received $1.44 million after federal and state withholdings, the lottery said. Steinhoff told lottery officials he only learned he had won when he received an email the morning after the drawing. "I was ecstatic and in disbelief. I called my daughter and girlfriend," he said.

The winning numbers in the drawing were 8, 23, 25, 40 and 53, with the red Powerball 5. Steinhoff was one of several players who came close to the top prize in that drawing. An unidentified player in Missoula, Montana, also matched the five white balls and used Power Play to win $2 million, claiming the prize on Sept. 5, the Montana lottery announced.

Players in Kansas and Texas likewise matched the five white balls and bought the Power Play to boost their prizes to $2 million, and 15 other tickets nationwide matched the five white balls for $1 million payouts. Lottery officials noted the frequency of high-tier wins came amid a historic jackpot run that stretched across several months.

The Powerball jackpot itself continued to swell through a record stretch of 42 drawings without a top-prize winner, from May 31 to Sept. 6. That streak ended when two tickets, sold in Missouri and Texas, matched all six numbers on a Saturday night drawing and split a $1.79 billion jackpot. Those jackpot winners face the choice between an annuitized payout of about $895 million paid over 29 years or a lump sum of roughly $410.3 million before taxes.

State lottery officials have emphasized the role of Power Play in increasing non-jackpot winnings during the extended run. Players who add the $1 Power Play option can multiply non-jackpot prizes by an assigned multiplier; in the drawings that produced Steinhoffs win, Power Play doubled eligible prizes.

The spate of large secondary prizes and the eventual jackpot winners renewed public attention on lottery play and the odds of winning high-tier prizes. Lottery administrators in Montana posted an advisory celebrating their anonymous winner and encouraged players to trust their instincts after one retailer said a customer acted on a "gut feeling" to buy a ticket that later won.

Steinhoffs decision to buy a home with part of his winnings follows a common pattern among lottery winners who opt to secure housing or reduce debt immediately after a windfall. He collected the check in Raleigh and posed for a photo with lottery officials, then outlined plans to spread the prize across immediate needs and family considerations, according to the North Carolina Education Lottery.

The recent run of large Powerball payouts has distributed significant sums across multiple states, underscoring both the appeal of multimillion-dollar prizes and the range of choices winners face about taking lump sums, annuities and how to allocate after-tax proceeds.