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The person who bought a Powerball lottery ticket in Southern California won a record $2.04 billion Powerball jackpot after no one hit the jackpot in more than three months.
The winning numbers drawn Tuesday morning in the Florida Lottery drawing room in Tallahassee were 10, 33, 41, 47 and 56 for the white balls and 10 for the red Powerball.
The winning ticket was sold at the Joe Service Center in Altadena, an unincorporated community in the foothills northeast of Los Angeles. Voicemails left to Joe’s service center were not immediately returned.
The jackpot is the largest lottery prize ever won, surpassing the previous record of $1.586 billion won by three Powerball ticket holders in 2016. Only four previous jackpots have surpassed $1 billion, but none come close to the current jackpot, which started at $20 million on August 6 and has grown massive with more than three winless months. No one has won the jackpot since August 3rd.
The jackpot was initially reported at $1.9 billion on Monday, but after updating the calculations, it increased to $2.04 billion Tuesday morning.
The Multistate Lottery Association said Monday night’s scheduled draw was delayed nearly 10 hours until Tuesday because participating lotteries had problems processing sales.
Problems with the draw on Monday night were blamed on a participating lottery’s inability to process its sales data. After the unidentified lottery has completed the pre-lottery process, the lottery can continue.
“Protecting the integrity of the draw is paramount, and with the cooperation of all participating lotteries, we were able to do just that in this historic draw,” said Drew Svitko, Powerball Products Group Chairman and Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Lottery.
Terry Rich, a former director of the Iowa Lottery who served on the Powerball board, said the delay was likely due to a two-part verification system for ticket sales that utilizes outside vendors to ensure everything is in order before games begin. Figures are drawn.
“Before the Multistate Lottery Association can conduct a draw, each state must go through a two-step process to verify that all sales and dollars match,” said Rich, who led the Iowa Lottery for 10 years and served as president of the North American Lottery Association. It’s a state-by-state process that separates the whole process, and it’s very effective.”
Ritchie said the state lottery deals with similar issues a few times a year, but delays usually don’t get much attention because the potential jackpot is far less than this week’s jackpot.
Winning numbers and recorded draw videos have been posted to Powerball’s YouTube channel.
The $2.04 billion prize is awarded to the winner of the Select Annuity, payable annually for 29 years. Nearly all of the winners chose cash, valued at $997.6 million.
The odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million.
The game is played in 45 states, as well as Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
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