Hoax? Workers Buy Powerball Winning Numbers For Wrong Date: $900 Million Powerball Win For Grissini’s Restaurant Turns To Loss And Viral Videos [Videos]
The below videos from Grissini’s Restaurant in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, shows workers celebrating what they believe is a $900 million-plus Powerball lottery win. “Here it is,” the guy in the video shouts as he read off numbers of 2, 11, 47, 62, 63 and a Powerball of 17. The trouble is, those were the winning Powerball numbers for January 6, as reported by the official Powerball website, and not January 9’s winning Powerball numbers.
The whole incident makes one wonder if this isn’t a ruse to get more YouTube views and earn money that way. Someone could have easily looked on the Powerball site for January 6’s winning numbers, played those numbers on Saturday, and then acted as if they’d mistaken those winning numbers from January 6 for January 9’s results. At this point, the below YouTube videos don’t have any advertisements in pre-roll, but they very well could. Going viral would bring more attention to the eatery and more Google AdSense monies to the Grissini’s Restaurant YouTube channel.
The first video, titled “Almost Winning The Powerball – Part 1,” shows the Grissini’s Restaurant workers almost in disbelief as the Powerball winning numbers are read. Uploaded to YouTube on January 11, the video is going viral with more than 8,000 views on YouTube thus far.
The second video is titled “Staff At Grissini Restaurant, Believes They Won The Lottery – Part 2.” In that longer video, the staff is seen in pure celebration mode after thinking they had won at least $900 million in the Powerball lottery. A man is seen crying and pulling out his phone, as he says he must call his wife.
The Powerball celebration is ongoing in the video without showing the moment when the workers realized they’d picked the winning Powerball numbers for the wrong day. As the eatery’s servers, cooks, and bartenders experienced the euphoric feeling of winning Saturday night’s $900 million-plus drawing, one of the New Jersey restaurant workers thinking he won the Powerball quit his job on the spot, reports NBC New York?.
Many of those who thought they won the Powerball celebrated and shouted, even as one woman can be heard asking, “Really, Charlie?” several times over. Apparently, no one immediately checked the date of the Powerball numbers they were reading.
Charlie Poveromo is one of the workers who thought he’d won the Powerball and couldn’t believe they came so close to actually winning the Powerball — if only they’d played those numbers previously. Apparently, someone might have just looked at the most recent winning Powerball numbers and played those numbers.
Viewers of the viral videos have plenty of comments for the workers who are celebrating a non-win, but the best advice folks have offered is that this is the reason why it is advised to play the same Powerball numbers each week.
There’s no telling why the Powerball players decided to play those Powerball numbers in their office pool one week but not the other, which leads to the hoax theory. If real, no doubt it was a big let down to think the New Jersey restaurant workers had won such a big jackpot with their winning Powerball numbers, only to realize if they’d played the same numbers on a different day, they would indeed have split the cash value for the $900 million-plus jackpot.
The winning Powerball numbers for the staff were bought on Saturday, January 9, but matched the previous Wednesday’s $528 million cash value prize. Because nobody matched all of the Powerball numbers, the Powerball jackpot grew to $1.5 billion and counting upwards by Wednesday, January 13.
The line to buy Powerball lottery tickets pictured at places like the above Primm Valley Casino Resorts Lotto Store shows how much people want to win the Powerball lottery.
Lottery officials said Powerball tickets were selling at nearly 370-thousand a minute last night. https://t.co/DXOFJEfMRk
— CBS News Miami (@CBSMiami) January 13, 2016
[Photo by John Locher/AP]
