On March 30, 2005, 110 players claimed 2nd-place prizes in the same Powerball drawing. Lotto officials suspected fraud, because the winners matched all 5 of the first 6 numbers drawn, a 1-in-3-million combination. Each player claimed they’d found their numbers in a fortune cookie, which was proven by the fact that most of them used the 6th number of their fortunes as their Powerball pick. If that number had been a 42 instead of a 40, they all would’ve won the jackpot. Source Source 2
In March of that same year, an episode of Lost revealed a sequence of Lotto numbers that hundreds of viewers played…
but that combination… LOST.
Which was arguably fortunate for them. I watched that show. One thing I remember being sure of is that I would never use those numbers in the lottery.