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Bloopers from lottery wins, including a Mega Millions multi-million dollar jackpot mistake

Pamela Ivey won 4 times her original prize when the clerk made a mistake by adding the Megaplier - which boosted her Mega Millions total to $1 million. PHOTO: Kentucky Lottery

I check the Mega Millions official website often to research my LottoPredict numbers. It’s been a reliable source for many years.

But in a rare error in 2012, the jackpot had jumped from $20 million to $208 million in just a few hours.

"Oh, OK," I thought. "They've pulled in money from a reserve fund I guess," and duly typed in the updated figures.

No, they had made a mistake and their figures were wrong. On my next check they had corrected it - and so did I, feeling sorry for the players who thought another Big Win was coming up.

Danske Spil is the Danish lottery website where hundreds of players thought they had won a fortune.

Then again in 2012, some 300 Danes who excitedly thought they had won billions of dollars each - discovered Denmark's state lottery company had made a mistake. They only got $35 to $70 each.

Human error was the cause, and it usually is. That's why it is so important that you get your tickets checked by machine instead of relying on a website, especially a third party site that are not the official site. 

Even if you only have a couple of tickets - get them officially checked.

Anyone can make mistakes, but missing out on a major win is one error you DON'T want happening to you.

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