Big Surprise for Iowa Lottery Player

If you've ever played the lottery you know that success or failure all boils down to one thing and one thing only - luck.

And as we all know, luck can be a tricky thing.

Take the Iowa Lottery for instance. Just last week we witnessed the pinnacle of bad luck when a $50,000 winning Powerball ticket became null and void after it went unclaimed for 180 days.

This week, the 'luck pendulum' is swinging the other way in the Hawkeye State.

Dexter's Samantha Faust was playing the Iowa Lottery's Bonus Crossword scratch when she discovered she had a winning ticket. She counted up the words on her puzzle, checked the prize legend at the bottom, and celebrated what she thought was a very nice $3,000 win.

Only it wasn't.

After downloading the Iowa Lottery app, she rechecked her ticket only to discover that she had the maximum ten words on her ticket which bumped her $3,000 prize to $30,000.

Get our free mobile app

By the way, her odds of walking away with the game's top prize based on the 17,264,500 tickets sold? 1 in 119,892.36.