A ticket-printing error helped an Iowa man win a $1 million lottery prize

• A 40-year-old prep chef from Iowa won a $1 million lottery prize because of a ticket-printing error.
• Josh Buster asked for five easy-pick plays, but a convenience store clerk gave a single play ticket.

A prep chef from Iowa won a $1 million lottery prize after the clerk at his local convenience store made a ticket-printing mistake.

Josh Buster, a 40-year-old man from West Burlington, Iowa, asked the clerk for five easy-pick plays on April 15, according to a news release from the Iowa Lottery. But the clerk accidentally handed him a single play ticket, he said in the release.

Then the clerk asked Buster if he'd mind if he printed the other four plays for him on a separate ticket.

The next day, Buster won.

"I got up to go to work early in the morning. I opened up the lottery app and scanned my tickets," he said, per the release. "I always keep my tickets in the console of my car. And I scanned it in the car and freaked out and ran back inside."

The ticket-printing mistake "changed the numbers that I would have gotten if he had put them all on one instead of making that mistake," Buster said.

Buster's $1 million prize was a share of a $20 million jackpot, the release says. He was able to match the first five numbers but didn't get the Mega Ball number.

At first, Buster didn't believe he had actually won.

"I don't usually have good luck, so I thought it was a mistake and there was going to be an error," he said. "So I Googled the lottery numbers to make sure I had the right ones, and I did! And then the rest of the day, I'm just waiting to wake up from a dream."

Buste plans to make car payments and finance the mortgage on his mother's house, he said, according to the release. Whatever he has left over will go toward his own retirement.

"It will take away a lot of my stress in my life — no more of the financial worries," he said.