Two grand prize winning lottery tickets sold at SC stores that are 18 miles apart
One gas station chain sold two grand prize winning scratch-off tickets in the same Palmetto State county, according to South Carolina Education Lottery officials.
A pair of Refuel gas station/convenience stores in Darlington County, separated by 18 miles, each produced $500,000 winning lottery games, officials said in a news release.
At the Refuel on South Main Street in Darlington, a woman asked the clerk how much she won on the scratch-off Money Madness Extra Play game she had purchased for $10 and was surprised to hear the six-figure response, officials said.
“It was surreal,” the winner said in the release. “I asked, ‘Are you sure?’ ”
Both the winner and the clerk burst out in screams, officials said.
She wasn’t the only Refuel customer who celebrated.
Days later, a lottery player at the North 5th Street location in Hartsville, also took home a half-a-million dollar, top prize after buying a 100X lottery scratch-off ticket for $10, according to the release.
Neither of the winners revealed any plans for spending their newfound windfalls, but the woman who bought the winning ticket in Darlington told officials that the prize will change her life.
The winners will be allowed to retain some privacy, as South Carolina is one of 11 states — along with Arizona, Delaware, Georgia, Kansas, Maryland, New Jersey, North Dakota, Ohio, Texas and Virginia — that allow lottery winners to remain anonymous.
This was the last of the five grand-prize winning tickets to be claimed, with the woman overcoming 1,224,000-to-1 odds to win, according to the lottery website.
One of the five jackpot winning Money Madness Extra Play tickets remains unclaimed, and the odds of capturing that grand prize 1,152,000-to-1, the website shows.
Both of the Refuel stores received commissions of $5,000 for selling the claimed tickets.
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This story was originally published August 7, 2025 at 9:13 AM with the headline "Two grand prize winning lottery tickets sold at SC stores that are 18 miles apart."
