$1 Million Texas Powerball Ticket Jan. 13, 2021
Front of Powerball Ticket
Back of Powerball Ticket
Redemption Instructions
Redemption Instructions
Ticket Cashed July 26, 2021 - Shanghai, China Winner?
In Person Redemption Requirement Waived By Texas Lottery Commission
On January 13, 2021, a Texas Powerball ticket was printed at 8:16 pm, just hours before that night's Powerball Drawing. That ticket was reportedly purchased through the Lottery.com app and was a $1 million winner. On January 21, 2021, Lottery.com issued a press release announcing they had their first "$1 million winner". Read the press release here.
Internally the company executives reportedly told the company staff they could not locate the winner. This ticket was printed during the illegal interstate lottery ticket sales scheme being run by Lottery.com out of Texas from 2019-2022, which came to light after an investigation that led to the termination for cause of former Lottery.com COO, CFO, and President Ryan Dickinson in June of 2022. It is possible this ticket was printed illegally, having been ordered by a person residing outside of Texas in another state.
By rule a winning Powerball ticket has 180-days to be redeemed. By rule all lottery prizes of $1 million or greater have to be redeemed in person in Texas.
Five months after the ticket was printed, with less than 30-days left until it was going to expire, company executives reportedly announced the winner had come forward. The winner was reportedly living in Shanghai, China, where it is illegal to purchase lottery tickets online, illegal to purchase U.S. lottery tickets, and where the Lottery.com app would not function due to Chinese regulations and due to Lottery.com geo-enabling features. Lottery.com founders then reportedly went on to tell company employees that the Texas Lottery Commission Director had waived the "in person" prize redemption requirement for this ticket due to the fact that the winner "could not get a visa to get to the USA". Company employees where reportedly told that as long as the winner signed the back of the ticket the Texas Lottery Commission would allow it to be cashed in. Lottery.com executives said the ticket was in the home of Ryan Dickinson, where it had been sitting for 5-months, but that Dickinson was out of town. The company reportedly sent an employee to Dickinson's apartment in Austin, TX, with instructions to get the ticket out of a desk drawer and then mail it to a hotel in Shanghai, China, to an address reportedly provided by the lead internal counsel of Lottery.com. The ticket was reportedly sent via FedEx to Shanghai, China. The winner then supposedly signed the Powerball ticket and mailed it via Fed Ex directly from Shanghai, China to Texas Lottery Commission offices in Austin, Texas. Mailing a lottery ticket worth $1,000,000 out of China and into the U.S. may have been a violation of Chinese or U.S. laws if the ticket was not declared to be worth $1,000,000 on customs forms. As the winner was not a U.S. citizen the requirement to notify the IRS and withhold taxes at the time of redemption may have been bypassed. According to Texas Lottery Commission records this Powerball ticket was redeemed on July 26, 2021 - 194 days after it was issued. The redemption date is well past the 180-day expiration date on all Texas Powerball tickets. The Texas Lottery Commission records list the winner as being "anonymous resident of Shanghai, China".
On 12/30/20 and on 1/2/21 a pair of Powerball tickets printed in Texas won $50,000 each in back to back drawings. The odds of winning $50,000 in a Powerball drawing are 1 in 913,129.18. The odds of winning back to back $50,000 prizes in consecutive drawings by the same person would appear to be .0009 (or 830 billion to 1 according to this article published in Lottery USA) when looking at the amount of tickets purchased for those drawings at the associated Texas Lottery Retail location Alt X in Waco, TX. According to Texas Lottery Commission records Ryan Dickinson, a founder and COO of Lottery.com, redeemed two $50,000 Powerball tickets in his own name in Texas on 1/5/21, with those tickets having been printed in Texas in the consecutive drawings at the same retailer (Alt X) on 12/30/20 and 1/2/21. On January 13, 2021 - 11 days after the 2nd $50,000 Powerball drawing, this $1 million Powerball winning ticket was printed in Texas (also by the same retailer Alt X), where it was stored in Ryan Dickinson's home desk for over 5-months before it was "won" by the mysterious Chinese resident, after Gary Grief waived the in person prize redemption requirement for this $1 million ticket, and 194 days after the drawing (making it an expired ticket by rule). The odds of winning two $50,000 Powerball Tickets in consecutive draws, and then printing a $1 million Powerball winner 10-days later by the same retail location, given the amount of tickets printed in that time by that retailer (Alt X) are high. The odds of printing a single $1 million Powerball ticket are 1 in 11,688,053.52. Ryan Dickinson is listed 142 times as personally redeeming winning Texas Lottery Tickets printed at retailer Alt X in Waco, TX. Click here to see the list.
It has not been explained how a $1 million Powerball ticket was sold to a person residing in a country where it is illegal to purchase Powerball lottery tickets, using an app that would not be enabled in China, and how this winner was able to bypass the in person redemption rule for $1 million prizes in Texas, and how this ticket was allowed to be allegedly redeemed after its redemption period had expired.
