World record: Californian wins $2 billion lottery

Eva Deschamps / November 9, 2022

A California player has won $2.04 billion in the lottery, the official Powerball website announced Tuesday, a world record after months without a big winner.

Only one winning ticket, with the numbers 10, 33, 41, 47, 56 and 10 for the “Powerball,” has been identified across the United States, according to Powerball.

“California Lottery produces the FIRST billionaire in its history!” the California Lottery tweeted on Tuesday, noting that the “lucky ticket was sold at Joe’s Service Center in Altadena. »

The lucky winner will have to choose between receiving the full amount via payments spread over three decades, or being paid in one lump sum of $997.6 million, according to a Powerball estimate. Prior to Monday night, 40 consecutive drawings had not produced a grand prize winner, leading the jackpot to climb to a staggering $2 billion-plus.

The jackpot had sparked gambling fever across the United States, and the drawing originally scheduled for Monday night had to be delayed by a few hours because the lottery in one of the participating states had requested more time to process its data, according to a tweet Tuesday from the California lottery.

The odds of winning the jackpot, by buying a two-dollar ticket, were only one in 292.2 million. By comparison, the chance of being struck by lightning is one in a million, according to U.S. health officials.