California Powerball player wins second largest jackpot in history
One lucky Powerball player has become an overnight billionaire after winning the second-largest jackpot in US lottery history.
The single winning ticket, worth a staggering $1.76bn, was sold at the Midway Market & Liquors store in Frazier Park, California, on Wednesday night.
Soon after the mystery player bought the ticket, the draw took place at the Florida Lottery studio in Tallahassee.
Duke, a Midway Market employee, told CBS News that he believed it would be a local winner as people come in “religiously” every day to the remote store to pick up a ticket.
“I’m sure somebody will be jumping up and down,” he said.
Duke joked that some of his regular customers had promised him a truck if they won the jackpot.
“Somebody owes me a truck, “ he joked.
“A lot of customers come in, they come in every day to get their tickets. A lot of them come in and say ‘oh if I win, I’ll get you a new truck’ so where’s my truck? I’ll be waiting.”
The winning numbers were 22, 24, 40, 52, 64, and the red Powerball 10.
The lucky winner can now can choose between an estimated lump sum payment of $774.1m cash prize or 30 payments payments over 29 years totalling $1.76bn, which will increase by 5 per cent each year. Both prize options are before taxes.
There were other winners as well.
One player in Arizona and one in Pennsylvania each matched all five white balls and an extra bonus from the Power Play, bagging them a $2m win.
Meanwhile, seven other players won $1m by matching the five white balls.
The four largest Powerball wins on record have all come from tickets purchased in California.
Wednesday’s jackpot win in California marks the second-largest Powerball prize ever won, after a series of 36 rollovers as no ticket holders matched previous draws.
This spot was last taken by a huge prize of $1.586bn back in 2016, won by three ticket holders, but this rollover has now dominated second place by surpassing that figure by around 144 million.
The largest prize ever won currently stands at $2.04bn, won by a lucky person in California in November 2022.
According to Powerball, the chances of winning the jackpot are one in 292,201,338, whereas the chances of winning some sort of prize, albeit small, is 1 in 24.9.
