Lottery Winner's Comedy Of Errors

Brad Duke knew the numbers he was seeing on the Powerball Web site seemed familiar, like the ones he's been playing for four years.

And, as the Star, Idaho, native looked more closely late last month, he couldn't believe his eyes: It appeared he'd won the $220 million jackpot.

It turned out Duke was the second-biggest sole winner ever of a Powerball jackpot.

But, as he

Duke says he left his computer and "went out to my vehicle and got my ticket. And then I came back in. The numbers matched, but it says right on the Web site that there may be mistakes and it is not 100 percent verifiable. And I thought I should get over to the lottery commission.

"But I was out of gas, so I stopped at a gas station to get gas to get to the lottery commission. And that's when I decided to run it through the verification machine at the service station. And that's when I knew that I'd won."

The employees were gleeful, Duke says: "One of the girls was doing a little tilt-a-whirl (dance )inside the area there. And I was trying to get the ticket back from her. She was so excited, she forgot to give me the ticket." Finally, she did.Ticket in hand, Duke headed to the lottery office. But it was closed for the Memorial Day holiday.

Then, "I couldn't remember if I'd paid my gas or not. I was in a rental vehicle and I didn't want to have a police officer after me. So I went back to the service station."

Finally, he called his father, John, and said, "Stand by for some life-changing news."

Storm asked John what he said to Brad at that point, and John answered, "I repeated his mother's words: 'He got married!' "

His second guess was that Brad "had won the lottery.' "

And when Brad said he had, John tells Storm, John was thinking, 'Sure, probably for around $5,000 or so."

On a bit of a more serious note, John says he's proud of how Brad has handled winning: "He's done an excellent job about that. He didn't float off into the sunset and go berserk."

Brad says he hasn't received any marriage proposals yet.

He told Storm it took him awhile to come forward because he wanted to form a team of legal and financial advisers first, and it "made sense to me to do that with a clear head. I didn't think I would have as clear head as I could have if I had come out and announced that I had won."

Brad opted for a lump-sum payment that will net him some $84 million. What does he plan to do with it?

"Turn it into $1 billion," was his ambitious response.