A mystery person in the US state of New Jersey has won a whopping $1.13 billion Mega Millions jackpot, the game officials said. According to NBC News, lottery officials announced that a single ticket matched all six numbers drawn on Tuesday. It was the fifth-largest prize ever won by Mega Millions players and the first time this year a ticket matched all the numbers needed to get the grand prize. The estimated jackpot was also the eighth largest in US lottery history, the outlet reported.
The mystery jackpot winner now has the option of taking a lump sum cash payment or having the winnings dolled out over 30 years in annual instalments. The estimated lump sum payment for Tuesday night's drawing was $537.5 million before taxes, according to NBC News.
Mega Millions had gone more than three months without a jackpot winner, before the big win Tuesday night, there had been 30 straight drawings without a jackpot winner. The last time someone won the game's grand prize was in December last year when two winning tickets were sold at the same gas station in Los Angeles, splitting the $394 million prize.
Now, the jackpot has been reset to its default $20 million.
Notably, Mega Millions drawings are done on Tuesday and Friday nights, while Powerball conducts its drawings on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday nights. The odds of winning a Mega Millions prize are 1 in 24, but the odds of hitting the jackpot are just 1 in 302,575,350, as per CBS News.
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The next big US lottery drawing will be Wednesday night for an estimated $865 million Powerball jackpot. No one has won that prize since New Year's Day, making for 36 drawings without a winner.
Meanwhile, March has been a very good month for lottery winners. A lucky man from Wayne County, Michigan, won a staggering $110,000 Fantasy 5 Double Play lottery jackpot for the second time in just six months.
The 59-year-old winner, who chose to remain anonymous, purchased the winning ticket for the February 11th drawing at a BP gas station on West 9 Mile Road in Southfield. Interestingly, this wasn't his first brush with lottery luck. He previously won the exact same jackpot amount in the August 31st, 2023, Fantasy 5 Double Play drawing, using the same set of numbers (02-06-11-20-23).
