A Tennessee family appearing on Today Friday morning claim that they’re the big winners of the Powerball ticket sold in their state. John and Lisa Robinson, who live right down the street from the grocery store that sold the winning ticket, along with their daughter Tiffany, attorney Joe Townsend, and his daughter Eileen have not gone to the lottery officials to claim their winnings, opting to make a public appearance first. Apparently this was Townsend’s idea, who says that the “American public wants to hear from them, even though they want to be private once this is over,” but for now, just to let everyone know that they’re the winners. Uh, okay.
Robinson says that his wife had asked him to stop and get the tickets just two hours before the drawing, and that as usual, he bought four tickets for the four members of his family. From there, he wasn’t feeling well, so he gave them to his wife and went to go lay down. Shortly after Robinson went to go rest, he was quickly awoken by his excited wife.
After realizing that they had won, the Robinson family decided to lay low as the media swarmed their hometown, with John just carrying his $500 million winning ticket around in his pocket like it’s no big deal. As far as attorney Townsend’s daughter’s involvement, Eileen happens to be a reporter in Memphis who was the one who got in touch with Today apparently by googling, “how do you call NBC.” No, seriously.
The Robinsons, their attorney, and his daughter say that they’re planning to go directly to the lottery officials from NBC’s studio. Don’t expect this story to get any less bizarre from here.