Winning ticket sold in San Jose
The California State Lottery confirmed soon after the draw that the winning ticket was bought from Ernie's Liquors on South White Road in San Jose. So far no details about the winner are known but the owner of the store, Kewal Sachdev, told the press that it is the first jackpot-winning ticket ever sold there. Speaking about how he found out about the win, Sachdev said: “My employee called me and said: ‘Congratulations, somebody won the lottery from our store.’ That’s when I got up and came right here [to the store]. It means a lot.”
The store is also set to receive a payout after selling the lucky ticket. In California, retailers that sell prize-winning tickets earn a bonus of half a percent of the jackpot value, up to a maximum bonus of $1 million. Sachdev said that some of the money will go to employees and to charity.
The winning numbers from Tuesday’s draw were 1, 2, 4, 19, and 29, with Mega Ball 20. Eight other players can also celebrate becoming millionaires after matching all five main numbers to win the lottery’s second prize. Six of these tickets - sold in Arizona, Massachusetts, Michigan. Minnesota, and two in New Jersey - won $1 million, and two further ticket holders from Massachusetts and Texas also played the Megaplier to each triple their prize to $3 million.
Where does this fall on the list of biggest winners?
The jackpot is the biggest Mega Millions prize ever awarded to a player from California and the second-biggest lottery prize to be won in the state. In January 2016, Marvin and Mae Acosta split the record-breaking $1.6 billion Powerball jackpot with two other tickets. Each annuitized share was worth $528 million, which remains the biggest prize ever claimed in California.
The largest lottery prize ever awarded to a single ticket holder in the US went to Mavis Wanczyk, a hospital worker from Springfield, Massachusetts. She won $758 million in a Powerball draw in August 2017. A couple from Hamilton County, Indiana, won the single-biggest Mega Millions jackpot in July 2016, landing a prize worth $536 million. The winners set up a trust to claim the money, which allowed them to remain anonymous, but they admitted to lottery officials that they forgot about the tickets for three weeks before they made their claim.
The Mega Millions jackpot has now reset to $40 million for the next draw on Friday 27th July, meaning that Powerball now offers the biggest lottery prize in the US, with a jackpot that currently stands at $147 million. Powerball is next drawn on Saturday 28th July at 10:59 Eastern Time.
