On everyone’s lips this morning are Tuesday’s PowerBall results that left South Africans in tatters.
A freak incident or another corruption scam?
How could a system designed to draw random numbers from 1 to 50 pull out six balls that are in numerical order?
It’s almost unheard of and in doing our research, we were unable to find a result anywhere else in the world similar to Tuesday’s PowerBall winning numbers.
Soon after the draw was aired, South Africans went into pandemonium on social media, calling out the National Lottery Commission (NLC) for its apparent corrupt ways.
The PowerBall results everyone is talking about
The anger and frustration was felt on Wednesday morning too with ‘Lotto’ dominating the trends list.
Here are Tuesday’s PowerBall and PowerBall Plus results:
PowerBall: 05, 06, 07, 08, 09 and the PowerBall was: 10
PowerBall Plus: 19, 27, 30, 34, 37 and the PowerBall was: 18
Here’s the shocking part about the PowerBall results: They didn’t come out in numerical order.
This is the order in which they were presented in, in real-time:
PowerBall: 08, 05, 09, 07, 06 and the PowerBall was: 10
According to the NLC, 20 lucky winners guessed all the numbers correctly, irrespective of the order in which they placed them in, including the PowerBall. For this, each won a total of R5.68 million.
Those who guessed all the numbers correctly but missed out on the PowerBall — there were 79 of them — each won R6 282.70.
Was it an inside job? – We did some digging
Whether this was a coordinated inside job to trick the system for the benefit of a few is impractical, despite the level of scrutiny the NLC operates under, remains unknown.
However, in South Africa this is not outside the realm of possibility. Without a shred of proof, we will have to — at least for now — chalk this up to 2020’s piling list of freak incidents.
The NLC has yet to address the backlash it’s received from Tuesday’s results but its disclaimer clearly states that all official results contained in ITHUBA’s central lottery system “will prevail and all games Rules and Regulations shall be applicable.”