Powerball Winners Come Forward: Police Department To Share $1 Million
From the archive: published Nov 29, 2012, 13 years ago. Details may have changed since.
Powerball Winners oftentimes wait days, even months to come forward, however a group of Columbus, Ohio police officers wasted no time in announcing their $1 million win.
The officers were part of a police department group that pooled their resources together to buy lottery tickets.
Approximately 20 officers will share in the good fortune, equaling approximately $50,000 each before taxes.
The majority of officers work in the forgery and auto theft deparments.
Sergeant Rich Weiner tells CNN:
“It’s nothing anyone can really retire from, but a lot of people are going to have a nice holiday season.”
Unfortunately Sergeant Weiner chose not to participate in the pool.
With a lottery prize worth $587.5 million the group could have walked away with more than $25 million each had they chosen the Powerball number of 6 instead of 5.
The group said they would come forward on Thursday night to confirm their prize. The money will be divided up and handed out by the lottery commission in order to avoid double gift taxation.
Wednesday night’s record setting drawing provided 58 winners with $1 million tickets while eight people won $2 million.
The Powerball lottery is run by the Multi-State Lottery Association.
With lottery’s continuing to provide massive returns from $1 and $2 tickets this is likely not the last we’ll hear of a big group sharing in the wealth.
In the meantime a lot of money is being generated for public education thanks to the massive lottery purchases for which part of each prize pays for state funding.
Do you play the lottery when it reached over half a billion dollars?