The Lethbridge Man Who Won the Lottery Three Times in Nine Months
Illustration: AI-generated dramatization (Gemini Flash Image)
It happened — best read as remarkable timing, not the miraculous.
The account
David Serkin, a retired cancer survivor in Lethbridge, Alberta, won three lottery prizes worth about $2.5 million in under nine months: $500,000 on Lotto Max (Aug 2024) and two $1-million Lotto 6/49 prizes (Nov 2024 and May 2025). A streak this rare still has a real, if vanishingly small, chance among millions of tickets sold — wonder without a wonder-worker.
Read the full account →Collapse the account ↑
David Serkin, a retired cancer survivor in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, won three lottery prizes worth about $2.5 million in under nine months.
In August 2024, he won $500,000 on Lotto Max. In November 2024, he won $1 million on Lotto 6/49. In May 2025, he won a second $1 million, on Lotto 6/49 Classic. The May 2025 ticket was bought at a Shell station.
Serkin has played since Lotto 6/49 launched in 1982. After an earlier win, he took his wife to Hawaii. He and his wife now plan a trip to Newfoundland.
A Western Canada Lottery Corporation spokesperson noted that because wins occur randomly, without a pattern and by chance, multiple wins are entirely possible.
Reviewer Notes
We weigh a claim on two things, kept separate from the story above.
Assessed by Miracles Jar AI
Real, rare, and entirely chance.
Real, rare, and entirely chance.
Three reputable, independent outlets agree on the same spine: The Globe and Mail (The Canadian Press, 2025) confirms name, location, cancer-survivor status, the three prizes and amounts, nine-month window, $2.5M total, and play since 1982. Global News (2025) corroborates August 2024 $500K Lotto Max, November 2024 $1M and May 2025 $1M Lotto 6/49 Classic, $2.5M total over nine months, play since 1982, Hawaii and Newfoundland plans. People via AOL (2025) carries the Western Canada Lottery Corporation statement that wins occur randomly, without a pattern and by chance, so multiple wins are entirely possible; notes the May 2025 ticket bought at a Shell station. Every load-bearing number checks out across the sources.
The lottery corporation itself supplied the honest frame: wins occur randomly, without a pattern, by chance, so multiple wins are entirely possible. The odds of any one person hitting these specific prizes are astronomically long, which is what makes the headline pop. But the relevant question is never "what were the odds for this exact man?" It is "across millions of regular players buying tickets over decades, how surprising is it that somebody, somewhere, strings together a hot streak?" — and the answer is: not very. Improbable-for-an-individual and inevitable-for-the-population are two different probabilities; confusing them is what makes lightning-strikes-twice stories feel miraculous when they are merely rare.
This mirrors the Joan Ginther case. When the denominator is large enough — a national lottery running forty-plus years across an entire country is an enormous denominator — extraordinary individual outcomes stop being shocking in the aggregate. A devoted player buying tickets for decades has many, many chances; the "astronomical" odds describe a single trial, not a lifetime of trials. None of this diminishes the joy of it. It locates the wonder where it honestly belongs: in the genuine human warmth of a cancer survivor's good fortune, not in any suspension of the laws of probability. The events are ordinary, naturally-explicable lottery wins claimed through standard prize processes at the Western Canada Lottery Corporation, with no supernatural element claimed by anyone involved.
One caution on an excluded detail: a handful of aggregator and social posts claim an additional earlier prize of roughly $250,000, which would make this his fourth big win. That detail does not appear in the three reputable sources verified, so it is left out; the entry stands only on the confirmed three-win, $2.5-million record.
Evidence ledger — what the verdict rests on
Three independent reputable outlets (Globe and Mail, Global News, People/AOL) report the same name, location, prize amounts, dates, and $2.5M total.
Consistent multi-source reporting; no contradiction on the load-bearing facts.
The events are ordinary, naturally-explicable lottery wins with no supernatural element claimed by anyone involved.
Standard prize claims through the Western Canada Lottery Corporation.
The lottery corporation itself stated that wins are random and multiple wins are entirely possible.
Official source explicitly frames the streak as chance, not pattern.
Across decades of play and millions of tickets sold nationwide, rare individual streaks are statistically expected somewhere in the population.
Conditional vs. unconditional probability — the 'astronomical' odds describe a single trial, not a lifetime or a population.
An additional earlier ~$250K prize circulates on aggregator/social posts but is absent from the three verified reputable sources.
Excluded from the verified record; entry stands on the confirmed three wins only.
What would raise this score: Independent documentation shrinking the coincidence window (timestamps, third-party records) would move this.
What would lower it: Evidence the timing window was wider than reported would move it down.
How this works
We keep two questions apart on purpose — so a thin record can’t make an impossible thing look proven, and a strong record can’t dress up an ordinary one as a miracle. First: Was it more than coincidence? (taking the account as true for the moment.) Nothing here breaks a law of nature — the question is whether the timing and arrangement were more than coincidence. Second: is there real evidence it happened? A claim only stands out when both hold up — and we never call anything certain either way. How ratings work →
The natural explanation
The leading natural account for this case is coincidence & the law of truly large numbers. Read what it explains — and where it stops.
The same wonder, across traditions
This claim is one of many that make the same assertion across faiths. See it side by side in Deliverance Against the Odds.
Sources
Tagged by proximity to the event. Primary sources are direct or contemporaneous; tertiary are downstream retellings.
- 1.Primarynews
National outlet; confirms name, location, cancer-survivor status, the three prizes and amounts, nine-month window, $2.5M total, and that he has played since 1982.
- 2.Primarynews
"Lethbridge, Alberta lottery winner", Global News, 2025
Independent national broadcaster; corroborates August 2024 $500K Lotto Max, November 2024 $1M and May 2025 $1M Lotto 6/49 Classic, $2.5M total over nine months, plays since 1982, Hawaii and Newfoundland plans.
- 3.Secondarynews
Carries the Western Canada Lottery Corporation statement that wins occur randomly, without a pattern and by chance, so multiple wins are entirely possible; notes May 2025 ticket bought at a Shell station.
Cases like this
Nearest on the map — similar in how miraculous they’d be, and how strong the evidence is.