Facebook Revealed The Missouri Powerball Winnner
One of the two ticket winners that will be sharing the record $587.5 million Powerball jackpot has been named.
According to SkyNews, 52-year-old Mark Hill announced over Facebook that he had bought one of the winning tickets at a Trex Mart near his hometown Dearborn in Missouri, which is about 35 miles north of Kansas City. Mark Hill posted:
“We are truly blessed … we were lucky winners of the powerball!”
Dearborn residents told 41 Action News that the Hills are a family of farmers. It is believed that the Hills have a young adopted daughter who still lives with them as well as several adult children.
The Missouri Lottery has yet to confirm the winner, but they will unveil them at a news conference at a Dearborn high school on Friday.
The Trex Mart store will be receiving $50,000 for being the store that sold the winning ticket.
The second winning ticket was sold in Arizona at a 4 Sons Food Store in Fountain Hills.
The second winner lives in Tucson and has told lottery organizers they want to remain anonymous.
The two winners could split a cash payout of $384.7 million before taxes, or about $192 million per ticket. They will have six months to claim their prize money.
It is still not clear whether the tickets belonged to individuals alone or if they had been purchased by groups.
The odds of winning Wednesday night’s draw were estimated to be one in 175 million.
Americans went on a ticket-buying spree. Tickets were being sold at a rate of 130,000-a-minute nationwide, about six times the volume from a week earlier, which pushed the jackpot even higher.
The jackpot had rolled over 16 consecutive times without a winner.
Powerball’s website crashed shortly after the winning numbers ( 5, 16, 22, 23, 29 and Powerball of 6) were announced, as did that of the Multi-State Lottery Association, which oversees Powerball.
Powerball players can win as much as $1 million if they have tickets with most but not all the drawn numbers. Many people are not aware of these prizes, so they can end up going unclaimed.
A jackpot $656 million is the biggest jackpot in United States lottery history. That jackpot was claimed in March 2012 by MegaMillions players in Kansas, Illinois, and Maryland, who all held tickets bearing the same winning numbers.
