Michael Underwood of Taylorsville woke up Saturday morning with a plan to relax and play digital instants, but he couldn’t relax for long after hitting a $1.16 million jackpot.
“I started shaking for about an hour,” he recalled. “I was in disbelief.”
Underwood played a $2 ticket and won the top level ‘gold jackpot’ in the Multiplier Mania game, a digital instant game featuring a progressive jackpot that can be won at any time. The odds of that win are 1 in 20 million.
“I never thought in a million years this would happen,” he said.
Underwood’s big win represents the second largest win since the lottery introduced digital instants. He called his son right away to tell him the good news.
“My son thought it was an April Fools’ Day joke,” Underwood laughed. “He had to check to make sure it wasn’t April yet.”
Underwood claimed his prize Thursday at lottery headquarters and, after required federal and state tax withholdings, took home $836,957.
He plans to invest his winnings.
In the Multiplier Mania digital instant game, a player can play from 50 cents to $30. After Underwood won the jackpot, it restarted at $80,000 and has grown to over $92,000 as of Friday morning.
Digital instant games are played exclusively online on the lottery’s website or on the NC Lottery Official Mobile App. Forty-one different games are available to play online now.