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One luckylottery winneris set for life!
The hunt for the second-largest Mega Millions jackpot has ended, with a single ticket scooping up the entire billion-dollar prize, according to theIllinois Lottery.
The jackpot-winning ticket of$1.337 billionwas purchased at a gas station in Des Plaines, about 20 miles northwest of Chicago, the organization said.
The prize, drawn on Friday night, is the third-largest jackpot of any US lottery game, according to the Illinois Lottery. The buildup has been mounting since Mega Millions drew a jackpot winner in April.
Though the winner has yet to come forward, they have two choices once they come to claim their winnings — annual payments or a lump-sum cash option.
The lump-sum cash option will yield a payout of an estimated $742.2 million. If they choose spread-out, annual payments, they can collect the total over time.
“Congratulations to the Illinois Lottery for selling the winning ticket for the $1.337 billion Mega Millions jackpot,” Pat McDonald, Lead Director for the Mega Millions Consortium said in astatement.
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The winning ticket matched all six numbers in the July 29 drawing — white balls 13, 36, 45, 47 and 67 — plus the gold Mega Ball 14, making it the prize winner.
This jackpot is the second largest in the 20-year history of the lottery. In 2018, $1.5 billion was won in South Carolina.
Prizes awarded in California are based on sales and number of winners, not a fixed amount, meaning that one of those 26 tickets will have a prize of more than $4.2 million. Mega Millions reported that 20 of the winners were sold in California.
Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, New Hampshire, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, Arizona, Iowa and Wisconsin also had winning tickets of varying denominations.
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The odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 302,575,350, according to Mega Millions. The largest jackpot of any US lottery game was $1.586 billion from a Powerball prize in 2016. The winnings were divided between ticket holders.
Mega Millions tickets are sold in 45 states, Washington, D.C., and the US Virgin Islands, where drawings are on Tuesdays and Fridays at 11 p.m. ET. Tickets are sold online in Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and D.C., but the purchaser must be in that state.
source: people.com
