Ocean County couple defies odds with insane $4M double lottery win

💲 Ocean County couple wins two multimillion-dollar NJ Lottery scratch-off prizes just  months apart.

💲Lottery officials say the odds of their double win are about 1 in 2 trillion.

💲 With two young kids and a third on the way, the couple says the $4M total win will help secure their growing family’s future.

TOMS RIVER — A once-in-a-lifetime stroke of luck has happened twice for an Ocean County couple.

Ocean County couple hits two NJ Lottery top prizes

The couple with two children and a third on the way are now multimillionaires, having won not one, but two top prizes in New Jersey Lottery scratch-off contests in the past six months.

On April 1 (no joke), the unidentified couple won the $1 million top prize in the $1,000,000 Ultimate Spectacular, purchased in Ocean County. The odds of winning the top prize in that $30 game are more than one in a million, NJ lottery officials said.

ALSO READ: NJ Lottery launches new holiday-themed scratch off tickets 

Second win: $3M ticket bought at Toms River gas station

Fast forward a few months. The same couple won $3 million in the Jackpot Millions Scratch-Off ticket contest. While we don't know where the couple is from, lottery officials said they purchased the winning ticket at the Fischer Bay Exxon in Toms River.

The odds of winning one of the three top prizes in this newly released $30 game are roughly one in two million.

NJ Lottery: Odds of double win are “astronomical”

The combined odds of winning both are about one in two trillion. To put it bluntly, lottery officials say a player would be 1.2 million times more likely to be hit by a meteorite.

“I’ve always said that you only need one ticket to win big. But I guess, in this case, two tickets certainly didn’t hurt. This is just pure blind luck,” said New Jersey Lottery Director James Carey.

New Jersey Lottery winners are legally allowed to remain anonymous. But the couple felt free to discuss how they play the lottery and how the double wins have helped their lives.

The Ocean County couple told NJ Lottery officials they have a 5-year-old, an 11-month-old, and are five months pregnant with baby number three, so they are in desperate need of downtime and entertainment.

“With our kids, we can’t really get out of the house,” the husband said. So, when the kids go to bed, he and his wife do scratch-off tickets. They like to make it a bit of a competition of who can win the most.

The husband started scratching, and he thought he might have won something, so he handed the card to his wife to check. She held it to her chest and started screaming that they won the $3 million prize.

The couple said the two huge prizes, totaling $4 million, will go a long way to take care of their growing family.

More big NJ Lottery winners in Camden, Essex counties

In other scratch-off-winning news, Camden and Essex County players had a fruitful week as well.

On Nov. 10, a $500,000 winning Lion’s Share ticket was sold at the Wawa at 464 Creek Road in Bellmawr, and on Nov. 14, a $600,000 Crossword Xtreme ticket was sold at Krauser’s at 1263 Broad Street in Bloomfield, NJ Lottery officials confirmed.

Report a correction | Contact our newsroom