BALTIMORE — A St. Mary’s County woman who has been playing the Maryland Lottery for less than a year turned a $5 win into a $50,000 top prize, and she did not realize how much she had won until she got home.
The Mechanicsville resident claimed the prize Oct. 16 at Maryland Lottery headquarters in Baltimore, her husband at her side, the Lottery announced Oct. 19. The winning ticket was a $5 In the Green scratch-off sold at Callaway USA Fuel, 20815 Callaway Village Way in Callaway. The Lottery did not release her name, as is common for winners who ask to stay anonymous.
The win sends $50,000 to a St. Mary’s household and a $500 bonus to a local store, and it is the latest in a string of five- and six-figure lottery prizes that have landed in Southern Maryland over the past two years.
A $5 win, then a second look
The woman told Lottery officials she had a busy day and picked up several scratch-offs, playing mainly for fun. One paid $5. She put that money right back into another In the Green ticket.
When she checked it, the store’s ticket checker showed “Winner, go to Lottery,” the message that signals a prize too large to cash at a retailer. She believed she had won $25,000. At home, her husband looked again and found a 2X multiplier on the ticket, doubling the prize to the game’s $50,000 top amount.
She said she was shocked and had not decided how she would spend the money. She plans to keep playing. Quoting the Lottery’s longtime slogan, she told officials, “You have to play to win, right?”
Local store earns a bonus
Callaway USA Fuel will receive a $500 bonus from the Lottery for selling a top-prize scratch-off. That is on top of the regular commissions Maryland pays its retailers, which totaled about $199.5 million statewide in the 2026 fiscal year, an average of more than $47,000 per retailer, according to the Maryland Lottery and Gaming Control Agency’s fiscal 2026 summary.
Scratch-offs like In the Green are the Lottery’s single biggest product line. The agency’s estimates show:
- Total Lottery sales of about $2.68 billion in fiscal 2026, which ran from July 2025 through June 2026
- About $1.05 billion of that from scratch-off tickets
- About $1.69 billion paid out in prizes
- About $532.5 million sent to the state’s General Fund, part of $681.6 million in total Lottery profit to the state
The agency notes that the fiscal 2026 figures are estimates.
Southern Maryland’s run of winners
St. Mary’s County has produced several notable winners recently. In April 2025, a St. Mary’s man claimed $150,000 on a scratch-off, and in November 2025 another Mechanicsville resident won $12,500 in a Lottery promotion finale. Next door in Charles County, a Hughesville man’s last-minute Powerball switch paid $50,000 in September 2025.
Prizes above $600 must be claimed at a Lottery claim center or at headquarters in Baltimore, which is why the Mechanicsville winner made the trip north. Lottery winnings are taxable income under state and federal law.
The Lottery encourages players to treat tickets as entertainment. Marylanders worried about their own or a family member’s gambling can reach the state’s free, confidential helpline at 1-800-GAMBLER or visit the Maryland Center of Excellence on Problem Gambling.
