Lorton Man Celebrates Birthday With $150K Powerball Win

LORTON, VA — A Lorton man had a very happy birthday. Julius Hanson-Takyi discovered he had won $150,000 in Powerball on his special day.

Hanson-Takyi bought the ticket at the Shell at 14352 Gideon Drive in Woodbridge. He used Easy Pick and allowed the computer to randomly select the numbers on his ticket for the Feb. 24 drawing.

The next day, his birthday, he checked the winning numbers and found he had matched four numbers plus the Powerball number. That would normally win $50,000. However, he spent an extra dollar for Power Play when he bought the ticket. That extra dollar tripled his prize to $150,000.

“It was a great birthday present,” he told the Virginia Lottery as he claimed his prize.

The winning numbers for that drawing were 4-33-43-53-65, and the Powerball number was 21.

Powerball drawings are held at 10:59 p.m. Wednesdays and Saturdays. The odds of matching all six numbers to win the jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million. The overall odds of winning any Powerball prize are 1 in 25.

The Virginia Lottery generates more than $1.6 million per day for Virginia’s K-12 public schools. In the fiscal year ending June 30, 2020, lottery customers helped generate more than $595 million dollars in funding for public education.