NC woman wins $1 million lottery prize on scratch card – then wins a SECOND jackpot worth $2 million

Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

Kenya Sloan, 40, from Shelby, could be the happiest woman alive after winning a total of $3 million from two scratch cards just months apart and now planning to use her win to open a soul food restaurant.

In August, the McDonald’s exec won $1 million on a $10 Carolina jackpot ticket — her first time ever playing the game — and decided to buy a piece of land to build a house.

“I’ve wanted to buy a house for about 15 years,” she told the Shelby Star in August.

In October, she bought a $20 Diamond Dazzler – another game she was playing for the first time – and sat in shock to win big money once again.

“I was like, ‘No way has this happened again,'” she told the NC Education Lottery. “But it was like that.

Kenya Sloan, 40, of Shelby, may be the happiest woman alive after winning a total of $3 million on two scratch cards just months apart. In August she won $1 million on the Carolina jackpot and in October she won $2 million on a Diamond Dazzler

“I told some of my family members and they couldn’t believe it either.”

After another round of beginner’s luck, Sloan has now decided that her restaurant will be her next big dream, according to the NC Education Lottery.

When Sloan arrived at lottery headquarters Thursday to collect her prize, she decided to take the $1.2 million lump sum, which totaled $855,006 after taxes.

“I just stood there in shock,” she said. “I just feel blessed. That’s all I can say.’

As for her Carolina jackpot ticket, she’s also looking at the lump sum of $600,000, which equals $426,063 after taxes.

In another exciting round of lottery updates, regulators have changed the number of lottery balls and increased the odds of winning the Mega Millions.

The latest win up for grabs is $940 million in the Mega Millions jackpot drawn on Friday – the sixth largest ladder prize in US history.

It comes less than two months after a player in California won a record $2.04 billion Powerball jackpot and $1 billion in other lottery prizes in early 2022 and 2021.

While it appears that players were given repeated chances to win the big prize draws, they are the result of math and more difficult odds.

beginner’s luck? Sloan had never played a game before when she won. After winning the first time, she bought a piece of land and is now almost done building her dream home and is now planning to use her newfound winnings to open a soul food restaurant

“It’s exciting to see the Mega Millions jackpot growing over the holiday season and now into the new year,” said Pat McDonald, the Ohio Lottery principal who also directs the state lotteries that oversee Mega Millions play ABC News.

In the fall of 2017, lottery officials approved changes to Mega Millions that significantly increased the odds from one in 258.9 million to one in 302.6 million.

They made similar changes to Powerball in October 2015, downgrading the odds from one in 175.2 million to one in 292.2 million.

The idea was that by reducing the frequency of jackpots, ticket revenue could increase week after week, creating huge prizes that would grab players’ attention and win more.