TRENTON — Two friends who claim they bought a Powerball ticket worth $1 million at a Mahwah convenience store last year sued the New Jersey Lottery Commission yesterday, claiming they tossed out the ticket because the state was too slow to update its website with the winning numbers.

Salvatore Cambria and Erik Onyango claim in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Trenton that they picked five of six numbers drawn on March 23, 2013, the same day a Passaic deli owner scored the $338 million Powerball jackpot prize.

The Suffern, N.Y. friends say that even though they didn’t pick the winning Powerball number the combination they chose entitled them to a $1 million consolation payout, the lawsuit says.

During a telephone conversation the night numbers were drawn, Onyango relayed the winning numbers to Cambria off the commission’s website, the lawsuit claims.

"The operators of the website had not timely updated the current winning numbers," it adds.

Believing he’d lost, Cambria discarded the $1 million ticket, the lawsuit claims.

When the two men went to the commission earlier this year with their claim they were told they were out of luck, their attorney says.

“They were told that without the ticket they were not going to pay,” said attorney Edward Logan.

Logan says the two men regularly bought lottery tickets for one another at the Mahwah 7-11.

On March 23, 2013, Onyango bought three tickets, keeping two for himself and turning over a third to Cambria.

The friends say they can prove the ticket that went to Cambria is the winning one because it was the middle ticket of three they purchased that day. Onyango kept the other two tickets, which include their serial numbers.

“The plaintiffs here may not have produced the winning ticket but have tendered two of the three tickets purchased in immediate succession and can prove that they in fact purchased and possessed the original ticket,” Logan writes in the lawsuit.

Judith Drucker, a spokeswoman for the commission, declined to comment.

Also named as a defendant is the Multi-State Lottery Association and Gov. Chris Christie.

Pedro Quezada, a Dominican immigrant and the owner of the Apple Deli Grocery in Passaic won the March 2013 jackpot, the fourth largest in Powerball history.

Quezada took his lottery winnings in a lump sum of $221 million or $152 million after taxes.

“Imagine… so much money,” Quezada said at a press conference held a few days after he’d won. “But it will not change my heart.”

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