One For The Show, Two For The Money: Massachusetts Man Wins Lottery Twice

Most who play the lottery dream of one day getting lucky and hitting a huge winner, say a seven-figure score.

Few who do realize a million-dollar win entertain the thought of doing it again. But that’s what happened for John Hammill of Braintree, Massachusetts.

Fifteen years after winning $1 million in one Massachusetts Lottery scratch game, Hammill has won another huge cash prize playing a different one. In fact, the second time the prize was much bigger, a $15 million win in the Massachusetts Millionaires’ Club game.

Hammill beats the odds again, takes one-time payment of $9.75M

Hammill had a choice between two options to collect his prize. He could either accept his winnings over a 20-year period at $750,000 a year. Or he could take a one-time payment for less. He chose the latter and was awarded $9,750,000 before taxes.

The Massachusetts Millionaires’ Club is a $30 scratch game. Players have a better than 1 in 3 chance of winning at least $40 in the game. However the odds of winning the top prize of $15 million are 1 in 5,376,000.

Hammill bought his winning Massachusetts Millionaires’ Club ticket at the Adams Variety store in Quincy. The store earns a cool $50,000 bonus for being the vendor selling the winning ticket.

Wins $15M prize 15 years after previous million-dollar lottery prize

Back in 2006, Hammill won $1 million in another Massachusetts online lottery scratch game called Set for Life. Set for Life was the game after which the lottery modeled its currently popular Lucky for Life game.

In Lucky for Life, the top prize is $1,000 a day for life, paid out as $7,000 per week. Recently Lucky for Life changed its format from a twice-a-week drawing game to a daily drawing.

The old Set for Life game had cost $10 to play and featured a top prize of $100,000 a year for life. Hammill won the second prize of $1 million in that game 15 years ago.

Prior to Hammill’s win, the latest exciting news from the Massachusetts online lottery was Leonard Thomas of South Dennis recently claiming a $500,000 Powerball prize just one day before his ticket was due to expire.

Thomas had won the prize in the August 19, 2020 drawing, though didn’t realize he had a winning ticket until a short time before the expiration deadline. It was a good thing he did, as doing so enabled him to claim his prize on August 18, 2021.

Shortly after Thomas claimed his winnings, Massachusetts joined other states across the country to begin offering a third weekly Powerball drawing on Mondays to go along with the Wednesday and Saturday drawings.

Recently the MA Lottery announced it had set a new profit record of over $1.1 billion for the recently completed fiscal year.