Powerball Jackpot Winner! One Ticket In California Scores $60 Million Prize
The Powerball lottery held a rare remote drawing on Saturday, July 19, taking its show on the road all the way to Boise, Idaho, to celebrate the Idaho Lottery’s 25th anniversary. And the numbers drawn at Idaho’s Snake River Stampede proved extremely lucky — for a Powerball player in California.
Powerball drawings are normally held in Tallahassee, Florida. But the trip to Idaho turned out to be the seventh jackpot winning draw of 2014, a year in which 1,057,978,947 Powerball tickets have been sold. That’s approximately one jackpot winner for every 151 million tickets. The actual odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are about one in 171 million, so the lottery is performing more or less as expected in 2014.
This time, the Powerball lottery needed just three drawings to produce a new winner. The sixth jackpot of the year was won on July 9, when one ticket in Ohio hit all six numbers for an advertised $122 million payout.
The jackpot won in Saturday’s drawing was “only” $60 million. The winning ticket was purchased in Fontana, California, a city of about 200,000 in Southern California’s San Bernardino County. The retailer who sold the ticket was a Cardenas Market at 8963 Sierra Avenue.
There were no second-prize winners in the July 19 Powerball drawing and 23 third-prize winners.
When Powerball holds a remote drawing, as it did Saturday in Idaho, the same lottery machines used in every other drawing are transported across the country is crates sealed tightly, to prevent the possibility of tampering.
“They have double lock seals on them so no one person can get into the equipment,” Sue Dooley, the national Powerball lottery’s senior drawing manager. But even so, Dooley fully inspects the lottery machines for any signs of tampering or damage from their journey.
The machines are then subjected to several test runs to insure that they are working properly.
They certainly worked properly for the California winner, if that person is even yet aware that he or she just became a multi-millionaire. The “cash value” of Saturday’s jackpot was $35.9 million, which is the amount the California winner will receive, before taxes, if he or she prefers to take the winnings all at once, rather than in 30 annual payments.
The “annuity” option would pay annual checks of an average $2 million.
After federal taxes, the “lump sum” amount will be about $26,925,000 — the amount the lucky Fontana Powerball player will actually pocket, because California charges no state tax on lottery winnings.
Are you that big winner? If not, your Powerball ticket still may be good for a smaller prize. Check your numbers against the following combination, drawn in Boise, Idaho, at 8:59 pm local time:
10 — 17 — 25 — 45 — 53 Powerball 9
The Powerball jackpot gets knocked back to $40 million for Wednesday’s drawing.
