NEWS

Suffern men who tossed $1M Powerball ticket sue for payout

Thane Grauel
tgrauel@lohud.com
The 7-Eleven on Franklin Avenue in Mahwah, N.J., where Salvatore Cambria and Erick Onyango of Suffern say they bought a $1 million winning Powerball ticket they threw out, mistakenly thinking is was a losing ticket. Now, they're suing the New Jersey Lottery, blaming it for failing to post the winning number promptly and demanding that it pay the $1 million.

SUFFERN – The night of March 23, 2013, Salvatore Cambria thought it was a worthless scrap of paper. But it might well have been a million dollars he tossed into his bedroom waste basket.

The Lonergan Avenue man had bought three Powerball tickets with a friend, Erick Onyango, at a 7-Eleven a short walk away in Mahwah, New Jersey. They talked on the phone soon after the $338 million drawing was held. They now allege in a federal lawsuit that the New Jersey Lottery Commission failed to update its website in a timely manner. Otherwise, they say, they'd never have thrown away their golden ticket.

Onyango checked the numbers on a mobile device.

"It was on an iPhone," Cambria said. "The dates are so small."

The winning numbers listed were for a previous drawing, so they thought they held losing tickets.

Now, the two Suffern men are suing the New Jersey Lottery Commission for the $1 million Powerball payout for matching five of the six numbers – they missed the Powerball number. Their suit filed Tuesday in Trenton, New Jersey, states the winning ticket was the middle ticket of the three bought with successive serial numbers. The other two tickets were kept by Onyango and prove they bought the winner, the suit states.

"The operators of the website had not timely updated the current winning numbers and based on the numbers ... as a result of the negligence in updating the numbers Cambria discarded his winning ticket as is his habit," the suit states.

Cambria said Thursday that officials at the lottery commission told him that if he had the tickets sold before and after the winner, he should be able to get the prize. He said that the commission had not ruled against his claim, but that it was taking a while so he hired a lawyer to play it safe.

"Everyone knows that I won," he said of the commission, and even the 7-Eleven's owner. "As far as proof, I'm not even worried about that."

The lawyer for the two, Edward Logan of Princeton, said it's an unusual case.

"They have the bread of the sandwich," he said of the tickets sold immediately before and after the winner, "they just don't have the meat. But they can more or less prove they bought that ticket."

In addition to the $1 million prize, they seek attorney's fees and costs.

Bob Patel, owner of the 7-Eleven on Franklin Turnpike in Mahwah, about a quarter-mile from Cambria's home, said the $1 million ticket was big news at his store.

"It was the first big winner since we opened in 2010," he said. "If he gets it, we are happy."

Not just because Cambria's a regular customer, he noted, but the shop would get a percentage from the lottery commission. Judith Drucker, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey Lottery Commission, said that would be $500.

She could not, however, comment on pending litigation.

The big winner of the March 23, 2013, drawing was from New Jersey. Pedro Quezada, then 44, bought the $338 million winning ticket at a liquor store in Passaic. The numbers were 17, 29, 31, 52, 53 and Powerball 31.

Read the lawsuit:

http://bit.ly/1jn1RX3