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Powerball: $310.5 Million Won In Michigan, Second Largest Jackpot This Year [Video]

By Maat van Uitert
Published on: 02:47 PST, Oct 1, 2015

There is one winner for the $310.5 million Powerball lottery drawn September 30 — but the winner has yet to come forward, reports CBS News. The $310.5 million jackpot is the second largest Powerball jackpot this year, trailing behind a $564.1 million jackpot split between winners in North Carolina, Puerto Rico, and Texas in February this year.

The winning Powerball numbers Wednesday night were 21, 39, 40, 55, 59, with the Powerball of 17, and Power Play of 3.

The $310.5 million-winning Powerball ticket was sold at a Shell station in Three Rivers, Michigan, lottery official Jeff Holyfield told CBS News. WWMT-TV spoke with Liz Smith, an employee at Three Rivers West Shell, the gas station that sold the winning Powerball ticket.

The small-town resident was shocked to learn that someone in Three Rivers won the $310.5 million Powerball, exclaiming it’s “crazy that it would be here in small town Three Rivers.” Smith repeated her surprise that “[s]omeone winning some $300 million — it’s just crazy to think!,” reports news station WWMT-TV.

The gas station employee explained that she sold some winning lottery tickets “in the past, but nothing of this magnitude.” Smith also said she hopes the $310.5 million Powerball winner turns out to be one of the gas station’s regular customers.

She’s not the only one. According to WWMT-TV, regular customer and Powerball player Eric Jorge appeared at the Shell station around 4:30 a.m. with his stack of Powerball tickets, hoping one is the $310.5 million winner.

“I knew I was always going to win one day,” the Powerball player confessed to WWMT-TV. “It’s just a matter of time, so hopefully, I have one of the tickets.” Just like Smith, Jorge also said he was shocked to learn someone in the tiny town won the $310.5 Powerball.

“I stopped to get gas on my way to work and talked to a Three Rivers [police] officer,” Jorge revealed to the news station. The police officer said ” ‘Did you hear what happened?’ So my first thing is thinking someone robbed the store, and he’s like, ‘No! Someone bought the Powerball ticket for the 300 million [sic]; I know I bought one here the other day so I hope I’m the one!’ ”

A winner hasn’t come forward yet, but according to Holyfield, that’s not unusual. The Michigan Lottery spokesman told NBC News that the “last big winner we had didn’t contact us for a month so she could line up a financial planner [and] lawyer.” In an email, Holyfield explained that the winner of the $310.5 million Powerball “would need to contact us during business hours, which are 7:45 a.m. to 4:45 p.m.”

MLive reports that for the $310.5 million Powerball, final calculations show that the cash option would be $197.4 million. The Powerball winner can also choose a payout over 30 years, although taking the cash option is the more popular choice.

The holder of the $310.5 million-winning Powerball ticket also will have won the second largest Powerball jackpot ever won in Michigan. In August, 2012, Donald Lawson of Lapeer, Michigan won a $337 million Powerball jackpot, the largest Powerball ever won in the state, reports MLive.

The last time a large Powerball jackpot was won was on August 1, when a California player won $110 million, and the latest $310.5 million Powerball jackpot has been building since then.

There were four other Powerball winners on September 30. Four ticket holders matched 5 numbers, which paid out $1 million. Those tickets were sold in California, Connecticut, Nebraska, and Wisconsin, according to MLive. One player from Rhode Island matched all five numbers with the Power Play, which pays out $2 million.

According to MLive, the next Powerball drawing will be October 3, at $40 million, far below a jackpot of $310.5 million, but still expected to draw a crowd nonetheless. The odds of matching all six numbers in the Powerball are 1 in about 175 million, according to the Chicago Tribune.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1brXVR8NFE

[Image credit: Getty Images]

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