MEGA Billionaire!
A Mega Millions player in New Jersey captured the first jackpot-winning ticket of 2024, worth $1.13 billion, on Tuesday night, snapping a 31-drawing drought.
The winning numbers were 7, 11, 22, 29, 38, and the gold Mega ball 4.
The $1.13 billion jackpot is the 5th largest prize in the lottery’s history.
The new billionaire can receive the $1.13 billion in annual payments or a one-time lump sum estimated at $537.5 million.
Thirteen players — in California, Colorado, Florida (2), Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New York (2) and Ohio — matched all five white balls for the $1 million prize.
One lucky New York player won $2 million while playing the Megaplier.
The odds of winning the Mega Millions is an astronomical 1 in 302,575,350.
The last time a Mega Millions jackpot-winning ticket was sold in the Garden State was on July 24, 2020.
The anonymous winner purchased the $123 million ticket in Bayonne, NJ, according to the lottery’s website.
Unlike other states — including New York and California — New Jersey allows winners to remain anonymous and the winnings can be claimed up to a year after the drawing.
Before the $1.13 billion drawing, Richard Wahl of Vernon held the record for the largest Mega Millions lottery win in the state’s history, pulling in the more modest $533 million prize on March 30, 2018.
Wahl’s win is now the 11th largest in the game’s history.
Tuesday night’s win was the first time the Mega Millions jackpot was won since Dec. 8, when two tickets in California matched the numbers for the estimated $395 million pot.
The largest Mega Millions jackpot, a whopping $1.602 billion, was sold in Aug. 2023 to a winner inside a Publix supermarket in Neptune Beach, Fla.
A limited liability company, Saltines Holdings, LLC, chose to receive its prize as a one-time, lump-sum payment of $794,248,882.00.
Another new billionaire was revealed earlier this month.
Theodorus “Theo” Struyck was named as the representative of a group that bought a Powerball ticket worth an estimated $1.765 billion in Frazier Park, Calif. for the October 11 drawing.
Struyck’s win was the second largest in Powerball history, $28 million behind Edwin Castro’s win in 2022.
