A lottery player changed his Powerball number at the last minute, missing out on $1.5B. It's ok, he still became a millionaire.

• A Virginia lottery player got all five numbers right and the powerball number — at first.
• But at the last minute, he changed the Powerball number, losing out on the $1.55 billion jackpot.

A Virginia lottery winner narrowly missed out on becoming a billionaire due to a last-minute decision to change his Powerball number.

Carlos Gutierrez was waiting for a chicken sandwich and a coffee on his way to work on October 9 when he decided to buy a ticket, according to the state's lottery administrator.

At Lee's Sandwiches in Falls Church, just west of Arlington, he picked out the following numbers: 16-34-46-55-67. He chose a Powerball number of 14, he told officials. But at the last minute, he had a change of heart and switched it to 19, he said.

The next day, he stopped by the sandwich shop again, only to hear that someone who bought a ticket there had won $1 million — and it turned out to be him.

It also turned out that the Powerball number was 14 — the one he almost picked. That draw's jackpot was $1.55 billion, around 1,500 times what he won.

It was still a pretty spectacular day for Gutierrez, whose matching five numbers netted him a huge prize — money he told the lottery organizers he is mulling on using to expand his business.

The odds of winning the Powerball jackpot in the Virginia Lottery are 1 in 292.2 million, according to the organizers. All the money raised goes towards the state education system, funding roughly 10% of the total K-12 school budget, organizers say.

There have been more agonizing lottery misses. In 2020, some unknown person lost out on $1.21 million in Britain after the prize went unclaimed, the BBC reported. In that lottery — the massive Euromillions draw — the prize must be claimed after 180 days, which passed without anyone showing up.

In 2021, British student Rachel Kennedy saw that her regular lottery numbers had come up for the Euromillions draw, which that week had a jackpot of $220 million.

Unfortunately, that was the one week her automated payment didn't go through, meaning she didn't have a ticket and did not win, according to UK newspaper The Mirror.