By Rachel Nostrant
(Reuters) – A very lucky Powerball player in Southern California has won the multistate lottery’s $1 billion jackpot prize, ending a streak of 38 consecutive drawings without a grand prize winner.
It was just the third time the Powerball jackpot prize has reached $1 billion. Jackpot winners have to match all six of the drawn numbers, with Wednesday night’s winning numbers being 7, 10, 11, 13, 24 and 24.
The winning ticket holder has yet to come forward, the California Lottery said in a statement, but the ticket was sold at Las Palmitas Mini Market in Los Angeles.
The winner can either accept $558.1 million in cash or can choose to receive the estimated $1 billion, before taxes, in 29 annual payments.
Thirty-six other tickets sold across the country won million-dollar prizes, while an additional three won $2 million prizes, according to the Powerball website.
The odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are around one in 292 million.
Only two other Powerball jackpots have reached the $1 billion threshold, the largest of which was for a whopping $2.04 billion, also won by a player near Los Angeles.
Thanks to the massive number of ticket sales for both the Powerball jackpot and the Mega Millions lottery, the California Lottery raised an estimated $46.1 million for public schools in the three-month wait for a jackpot winner, it said.
Now that a winning ticket has been drawn, the jackpot will be reset to $20 million.
(Reporting by Rachel Nostrant in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
