A group of work colleagues who all chipped in for a lottery ticket thought they had bagged £800million in a Powerball draw.
But their full house of numbers which left the 42-strong staff cheering and celebrating, counting down each successful announcement, soon turned to pain. Their joy at winning the £800m jackpot was soon dashed by a slight detail.
Their Powerball ticket saw servers, cooks and bartenders in Grissini Restaurant, an establishment in New Jersey, United States waiting on the numbers for the draw.
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After what they believed was a successful draw, one of the workers even quit their job before realising the successive series of numbers on their ticket was for a different day.
Their ticket, which included the numbers 2, 11, 47, 62, 63 and a Powerball of 17, was an exact match to a previous draw that week. Their Saturday ticket did match the numbers on the Wednesday draw, but the different dates nulled their win.
It did not stop restaurant workers from cheering and hugging one another after they believed they had won, and those from the restaurant are now speaking out on how devastated they feel, The Sun reported.
Bartender Charlie Poveromo, 55, said of the draw from 2016: "I picked up my phone and start calling out the numbers to everyone here. All the numbers matched our tickets. Then pandemonium hit.
"There was just so much joy, and I can't put into words the feelings of euphoria that we all felt. When we found out, it was like a balloon deflating." Another waiter, Claudio Campos, was left "speechless" by the news.
"It was like a bucket of ice was just thrown on all of our dreams," they said, adding: "We all started hugging each other and jumping around… We had that amazing feeling that nobody can explain. I looked at it again and I was speechless… I had to give the bad news to the guys."
One of the staff members had already quit working the restaurant before the realisation of those lottery number mix-ups was made.
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