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A Central Otago family has paid off the mortgage and is planning a South Island trip after scooping $5 million in a Powerball First Division win.

The lucky winner, who wishes to remain anonymous, was checking his emails last Thursday when he saw one from MyLotto Customer Support.

“It said I’d won a prize and to fill in a Prize Claim Form, so I thought I’d better log in and have a look,” he said.

Although MyLotto played a virtual animation of the draw, the line the man won on wasn’t visible on the screen as it was further down his ticket.

“I filled in the Prize Claim Form — not even knowing how much we’d won and remember thinking to myself, ‘Maybe we’ve won Second Division, sweet as!’,” he said.

“Afterwards I looked at the ticket and was so shocked to see we’d won Powerball.”

Not quite believing it, he called MyLotto Customer Support to double-check.

When they confirmed, he asked them how much he had won.

“They said, ‘You’ve won $5 million,” he said.

“I was shaking, and I wanted my wife to hear it, too, so I put them on speakerphone and asked them to repeat it. ‘Congratulations, we confirm you’ve won $5m’.

The couple burst into tears and spent the remainder of the day “either dancing or crying”, he said.

“The rest of the day and night is one big, amazing blur, I don’t even remember checking my ticket, so the next day I logged in and saw you could replay the draw — it was brilliant.”

The prize hit the family’s account late last week, just in time for Christmas.

“There’s a lot of zeroes there,” the man said.

“The mortgage has been paid off, and that feels amazing. We’re looking at setting up some investments for us, and for our kids’ futures, and we’ve kept a little aside for a special South Island trip, which we hope to take very soon.

“This is absolutely life-changing for us. It’s been a tough year and now we feel like we can breathe.”

The man usually only buys a ticket when the jackpot is over $10m.

But on this occasion he had bought a multi-draw ticket when the jackpot was $23m the draw before.

“With it being the lead up to Christmas, I thought I might forget my ticket, so I bought a couple of draws in advance.

“When I saw the $23m had been won, I forgot all about the other tickets I still had,” said the man.

His prize is made up of $4m from Powerball and $1m from Lotto First Division.

This is the 21st Powerball First Division winner of 2024.