By NanaimoNewsNOW Staff

Longtime friends to split $20M Lotto 6/49 jackpot won in Nanaimo

Nov 30, 2018 | 11:11 AM

NANAIMO — Decades of spending money on lottery tickets is now the best investment a Nanaimo man and his lifelong friend ever made.

David Dubbin, 63, and childhood friend John Prpich, 61, are splitting the nearly $20-million Lotto 6/49 jackpot they won on Wednesday night.

“I wouldn’t want to know how much I’ve spent on tickets over the years but I guess I don’t really care now,” Dubbin told NanaimoNewsNOW, laughing. “We used to buy our tickets one draw at a time. Now we’ll just buy them a year at a time, we’ll keep playing the same numbers though.”

Dubbin, who owns a local electrical business, has a wife and two children and has called Nanaimo home for 35 years. He and Prpich grew up playing hockey together in Port Alberni, where Prpich still lives.

Dubbin said he plans to buy a new truck soon and will start the search for a new home “with a nice big shop.”

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“I don’t want to go crazy with it. You can spend $10 million pretty quick, I’ve read the stories.”

Already scheduled to retire on Jan. 14, his 64th birthday, Dubbin chuckled as he said that date might move up a bit now.

Dubbin said it was his wife who implored him to check his ticket around 5 a.m. Thursday.

“She pushed her iPad in front of me and said ‘look there’s one winner from Nanaimo.’ Whenever that happens I always think ‘oh boy, it would be nice if it was us’ and I go down and check and it never is. This time it was.

“I phoned Johnny shortly thereafter and I told him ‘we won $19-million’ and he said ‘is that all?’”

The harbour city has seen its share of big lottery winners in recent memory.

A $21-million Lotto 6/49 jackpot was claimed by a Nanaimo man in August of 2016.

One year later a Nanaimo woman took home $500,000 on the Extra of the Daily Grand draw.

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