Washington, D.C

DC man says he’s owed $340 million after incorrect winning Powerball numbers posted

Published

2 years ago

February 19, 2024

DC man says he’s owed 0 million after incorrect winning Powerball numbers posted

A 60-year-old Washington, D.C., man thought he became an overnight multimillionaire but now he’ll have to argue in court to retrieve the $340 million fortune he says Powerball unlawfully denied him.

John Cheeks’ January 2023 Powerball ticket indicated he’d won $340 million, but when he attempted to redeem the prize, he got denied and told to throw his jackpot “in the trash can,” according to the complaint filed in November 2023.

Cheeks’ suit alleges he was deprived of his winnings due to “unlawful collusion” by Powerball, the Multi-State Lottery Association and Taoti Enterprises — a D.C.-based digital advertising agency that operates the D.C. Lottery website. The named defendants did not honor the posted winning Powerball numbers that matched Cheeks’ lottery ticket, according to the suit.

USA TODAY contacted Powerball, the Multi-State Lottery Association and Taoti Enterprises but did not receive a response.

“This is not merely about numbers on a website; it’s about the reliability of institutions that promise life-changing opportunities, while heavily profiting in the process,” Rick Evans, Cheeks’ attorney, told USA TODAY. “… We intend to collect every penny to which (Cheeks) is entitled to right this wrong.”

How did Cheeks find out he’d won?

Cheeks bought the “winning ticket” Jan. 6, 2023, from a licensed retailer, according to the suit. He told USA TODAY that he chose the ticket’s numbers by using family birthdates. The numbers Cheeks chose were “07-15-23-32-40” with a Powerball number of 2, the suit says.

“All the numbers that I have played are totally common significant related numbers to me and my life,” he said.

The live drawing of the numbers occurred Jan. 7, 2023, but Cheeks said he didn’t rush to check his ticket due to him being “exhausted as hell” from a meeting with his accountant that day. Unbeknownst to Cheeks, the winning numbers on the website that day matched the ticket he’d bought.

When Cheeks checked the D.C. Lottery website the following morning, he saw he’d won the jackpot due to his numbers matching the winning numbers, the suit says.

The odds of winning a Powerball jackpot are about 1 in 292.2 million.

“I couldn’t believe my eyes so I turned my laptop off, unplugged it, took it down and started it up again,” Cheeks said. “There were the numbers again, matching my ticket.”

Although Cheeks had possibly won millions, he recalled not being excited, but “exhausted” and “numb.”

With a clear head, Cheeks said he called a friend who told him to take a picture of the winning ticket because “you never know what could go wrong.” Cheeks held off from redeeming the ticket that day so he could wait and meet with advisors beforehand, he said.

Taoti claims posting of Cheeks’ numbers was ‘a mistake’

For the next three days, the D.C. Lottery website showed the winning numbers. By Jan. 10, 2023, the numbers on the website had changed and differed from the ones shown since Jan. 7, according to the suit.

During an administrative hearing May 2, 2023, Taoti claimed that it “accidentally” posted Cheeks’ winning numbers to the D.C. Lottery website Jan. 7, the suit says. The company then said the “mistake” wasn’t removed from the website until Jan. 9.

That the numbers were erroneously posted on the D.C. Lottery site explains why Cheeks’ personal numbers didn’t match the numbers Cheeks saw when he went to a licensed retailer and checked his ticket against what was posted at the Office of Lottery and Gaming claiming center in D.C., the lawsuit says.

More lottery: Powerball winning numbers for Feb. 17 drawing: Jackpot worth over $300 million

While at the claim center, one of the officials told Cheeks to throw the ticket away “in the trash can” and that “we’re not going to pay you for it,” he said.

“I gave the guy a look and said ‘I think I’ll just keep this,’” Cheeks said. “He looked at me and I walked out. That was a very humiliating day.”

Brittany Bailey, the project manager at Taoti, said in court documents that Cheeks’ “attempted scheme” is a way to capitalize on an “obvious error” on the D.C. Lottery website. Rather than posting random numbers on a “test website” by Taoti, as intended, they were mistakenly posted Jan. 6 on the D.C. Lottery Website, she said.

“First, any ordinary person knows that winning lottery numbers are not posted or advertised in advance; they cannot be because they have not been drawn yet,” Bailey said in the court filings. “Second, the list of numbers posted did not include a Powerball number, but simply a blank red ball. These red flags would cause any reasonable person to know that they were not the valid winning numbers for the following day.”

The test numbers posted on Jan. 6 remained on the D.C. Lottery website even after the correct numbers were posted, Bailey said. When Taoti employees saw the test numbers, they realized the error and took them down, she said.

What did Cheeks do with the Powerball ticket?

Cheeks’ Powerball ticket is currently in a safe deposit box, he said.

If Cheeks is granted the money, he said he’ll open up a bank like Homestead and HomeTrust that would help people who normally wouldn’t qualify for a home mortgage.

“We’re going to build (and) rehab homes from D.C., to Maryland, Virginia and any other place that we’re needed to help solve the homeownership crisis,” Cheeks said.

The Powerball jackpot grew to $754.6 million before a ticketholder in Washington state claimed the prize on Feb. 6, 2023.

Evans said the D.C. Lottery and Powerball are aggressively marketing to consumers in D.C. and others on a national and international stage. The companies’ failure to make a public service announcement once they realized the game was compromised only led to them selling more tickets and “generating an enormous amount of revenue,” he said.

“As the pot grows, more people play and DC and Powerball make tremendous amounts of money on those ticket sales,” Evans said. “… This lawsuit raises critical questions about the integrity and accountability of lottery operations and the safeguards—or lack thereof—against the type of errors that Powerball and the DC Lottery contend occurred in this case.”

Due to the D.C. Lottery and Powerball’s “alleged error,” Evans said Cheeks should be paid out the winnings because precedent exists of them paying declared winners when a similar situation occurred in Iowa.

Iowa lottery officials blamed an unspecified “human reporting error” in November 2013 after posting the wrong Powerball numbers, which remained on its website for more than six hours. Anyone who cashed in their winning tickets was still able to claim their prizes, which ranged from $4 to $200, the Associated Press reported.

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Washington, D.C

50 years of DC Metro: A look back in photos

Published

42 seconds ago

March 27, 2026

Press Room

50 years of DC Metro: A look back in photos

One family, four generations with DC Metro

As Metro celebrates 50 years of service, one D.C. family is marking the milestone with a legacy of their own — four generations who have all worked on the system, helping keep the region moving for decades.

WASHINGTON – D.C. residents got on their first Metro train 50 years ago on March 27, 1976. Here’s a look back at the beginning.

Connecticut Avenue; NW; looking south. evening traffic-jams are aggravated by metro subway construction in Washington D.C. ca. 1973 (Photo by: HUM Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

View of the Metro Center subway station (at 13th and G Streets NW) during its construction, Washington DC, November 16, 1973. (Photo by Warren K Leffler/PhotoQuest/Getty Images)

Standing in the cavernous tunnel, planners wearing hard hats discuss the construction progress of the Metro Center subway station at the intersection of 13th and G Streets in Washington, DC, November 16, 1973. (Photo by Leffler/Library of Congress/In

WASHINGTON, DC – NOVEMBER 07: FILE, Metro construction miners and blasters on a jumbo drill outside the hole they are working on at Rock Creek Parkway and Cathedral Ave NW in Washington, DC on November 7, 1973. (Photo by James K.W Atherton/The Washin

WASHINGTON, DC – MARCH 4: FILE, View of the Post Office at North Capital and Mass Avenue NE, and 1st NE where subway tunnels were being constructed in Washington, DC on March 4, 1974. (Photo by Joe Heiberger/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

WASHINGTON, DC – AUGUST 29: FILE, Workers rig a pipe at the entrance to the Rosslyn Metro Station in Washington DC on August 29, 1974 (Photo by Larry Morris/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

WASHINGTON, DC – MARCH 27: FILE, The crowd at Rhode Island Station on opening day of the Washington Metro on March 27, 1976. (Photo by James A. Parcell/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

WASHINGTON, DC – MARCH 28: FILE, Reverend Leslie E. Smith of the Episcopal Church, right, and George Docherty of New York Avenue Presbyterian church hold a joint service at the new Metro Center station in Washington, DC on March 28, 1976. (Photo by D

WASHINGTON, DC – JULY 1: FILE, An aerial view of metro construction where it crosses the Washington Channel. The Potomac River, the Pentagon and Northern Virginia can be seen in the distance. (Photo by Ken Feil/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 27: FILE, A packed train of commuters on the Silver Spring metro on the Red Line on January 27, 1987. (Photo by Dudley M. Brooks/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

WASHINGTON, DC – JULY 4: FILE, Thousands of people press their way into the Smithsonian Subway station after the Independence Day fireworks in Washington, DC on July 4, 1979. (Photo by Lucian Perkins/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

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Washington, D.C

Pop-up museum in DC features the scandal that changed American history – WTOP News

Published

12 hours ago

March 26, 2026

Press Room

Pop-up museum in DC features the scandal that changed American history – WTOP News

Among the liquor store, barber shop and dry cleaners at the Watergate Complex’s retail plaza, there is a new pop-up museum dedicated to the scene of the crime that toppled Richard Nixon’s presidency.

The temporary exhibit features the work of artist Laurie Munn — portraits of members of the Nixon administration and those connected to the Watergate break-in. The exhibit features members of Congress, the media and some who were on President Nixon’s enemies list.(WTOP/Jimmy Alexander)

Keith Krom, chair of the Board of Directors of the Watergate Museum, told WTOP the exhibit was first featured in the gallery in 2012 for the 40th anniversary of the break-in at the Democratic National Committee.

“When she (Munn) learned about our museum effort, she offered to reassemble them as a way for us to expand awareness of the museum,” Krom said.

Krom, who lives in the Watergate, said his favorite portrait is of one of the special prosecutors, whose firing sparked the “Saturday Night Massacre” in 1973.

“I had the pleasure of being a student of Archibald Cox,” Krom said. “He served as my mentor for my third-year writing project.”

Krom said during this time, at the Boston University School of Law, he spent a great deal of time with him.

“I didn’t realize how much he must have gone through. Here he was, this one man, who was challenging the president of the United States over something pretty serious,” Krom said.

The pop-up opened in October and was recently extended to stay open until April 25. Krom said the hope is to find it a permanent location within the Watergate Complex, where they can “present the history of Watergate, but with two perspectives.”

The first would be on the building’s “architectural significance to D.C.,” he said.

“You may not like the design, you actually may hate it,” Krom said. “But you cannot deny that it changed D.C.’s skyline.”

The secondary focus would, of course, be on the mother of all presidential scandals that changed the course of American history.

“That’s where that suffix ‘-gate’ started and continues to be used for almost every scandal that comes out today,” Krom said.

The inspiration for the museum spawned from an interaction from a tourist outside the Watergate.

“He says, ‘This is the Watergate, right?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, it’s one of the buildings,’” Krom recalled.

The tourist then asked Krom, “So where’s the museum?”

“I was like, ‘Oh, we don’t have a museum.’ And he literally just looked at me and said, ‘That’s so sad.’ And he got on his bike and rode away,” Krom said.

While the self-proclaimed political history nerd said he “still gets goose bumps” when he drives by the Capitol at night, Krom hopes that when people leave the museum, “they’ll walk away with a new appreciation for how our government works, the guardrails that are in place.”

“Maybe an understanding that those guardrails themselves are kind of frail, and they probably need our collective help in making sure they last — that’s what we hope to accomplish,” Krom said.

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Washington, D.C

Cherry Blossoms Hit Peak Bloom in Washington DC

Published

1 day ago

March 26, 2026

Press Room

Cherry Blossoms Hit Peak Bloom in Washington DC

Almost at peak! A view of the cherry trees in Washington DC show they’re about to burst into peak bloom very soon. Image: NPS

According to the National Park Service at the National Mall, famous cherry blossoms around the nation’s capital have hit peak bloom conditions. The National Park Service X account for the National Mall proclaimed this morning, “PEAK BLOOM! PEAK BLOOM! PEAK BLOOM!”

It became apparent yesterday that the bloom would be at peak today. “Despite a sunny afternoon and patches of blue sky, the cherry blossoms remain at Stage 5: Puffy White,” the Park Service wrote on X yesterday. Stage 5, “Puffy White”, is the final stage blossoms go through before being in full bloom. They start at Stage 1 as a “Green Bud”, grow into Stage 2 with “Florets Visible”, and then florets become extended at Stage 3. In Stage 4, there is “Peduncle Elongation” which sets the stage for the puffy blossoms to appear in Stage 5. Puffy White and Peak Bloom are defined as when 70% of the blossoms on the trees reach that stage.

An explosion of blooming flowers is about to hit Washington DC's parks. Image: NPS — An explosion of blooming flowers is about to hit Washington DC’s parks. Image: NPS

Peak bloom varies annually depending on weather conditions; the most likely time to reach peak bloom is between the last week of March and the first week of April. According to the Park Service, extraordinary warm or cool temperatures have resulted in peak bloom as early as March 15 in 1990 and as late as April 18 in 1958.

Cherry blossom in Washington DC. Image: Weatherboy

The planting of cherry trees in Washington DC originated in 1912 as a gift of friendship to the People of the United States from the People of Japan. In Japan, the flowering cherry tree, or “Sakura,” is an important flowering plant. The beauty of the cherry blossom is a symbol with rich meaning in Japanese culture.

Dr. David Fairchild, plant explorer and U.S. Department of Agriculture official, imported seventy-five flowering cherry trees and twenty-five single-flowered weeping types from the Yokohama Nursery Company in Japan. After experimenting with growing them on his own property in Maryland, he deemed that the cherry tree would be perfect to plant around the Washington DC area. This triggered an interest by a variety of individuals to plant the tree around Washington. In 1909 the Mayor of Tokyo, Yukio Ozaki, donated 2,000 trees to the United States on behalf of his city. When the trees arrived, they were riddled with disease and insects and to protect other agriculture, they were burned. The Tokyo Mayor made a second donation of trees in 1910, this time amounting to 3,020 trees. This started the forest of cherry trees that now line the Potomac basin around Washington DC. In a gesture of gratitude back to Japan, President Taft sent a gift in 1915 of flowering dogwood trees to the people of Japan. Thousands of trees have been added since, including another gift of 3,800 trees from Japan in 1965.