Winning lottery ticket for $1.35 billion Mega Millions jackpot was sold in Maine

Winning lottery ticket for $1.35 billion Mega Millions jackpot was sold in Maine

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A single winning ticket for a Mega Millions lottery jackpot of at least $1.35 billion, the second largest jackpot in U.S. history, was sold in Maine, lottery organizers said on Saturday.

“Congratulations to the Maine State Lottery, which has just won its first-ever Mega Millions jackpot,” Ohio Lottery director Pat McDonald, lead director for the Mega Millions Consortium, said in a statement. “Its the fourth billion-dollar jackpot in Mega Millions history.”

The statement did not identify the city or the holder of the winning ticket, which would have cost $2 to buy and matched all six numbers. They have the choice of a lump-sum payment of $724.6 million or an annual payout over 30 years.

Most winners go for the lump sum, which comes with a hefty tax bill, according to the Mega Millions website.

The winning numbers for the jackpot were 30, 43, 45, 46 and 61, plus the power ball 14. The jackpot had been rolling since it was last won on October 14, when a $502 million prize was shared by winning tickets in California and Florida. It is the second largest in the 20-year history of the game, topped only by the $1.537 billion won in South Carolina in October 2018.

In addition to the jackpot-winning ticket, fourteen tickets matched all five numbers to win the games second-tier prize of $1 million. Four were sold in New York, two in California, and one each in Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Texas.

Half of the proceeds from the sale of each Mega Millions ticket remains in the state where the ticket was sold, where the money supports lottery beneficiaries, such as education or public employee pensions, and retailer commissions.