Powerball ‘billionaire’ is staying quiet — for now
Oregon winner has year to step forward, be ID’D
A lucky ticket-buyer in Oregon has won a $1.3 billion Powerball jackpot, which was the eighth-largest lottery prize in U.S. history.
Should the winner who matched all six numbers forgo the rarely claimed option of a payout over 30 years, the lump-sum before taxes would be
$621 million. Federal and state taxes would cut into the haul significantly, but what’s left over will be more than enough to brighten anyone’s day.
Here’s what we know about the win so far:
Who won?
A person with a ticket matching all six Powerball numbers in Saturday’s $1.3 billion jackpot came forward Monday to claim the prize, Oregon officials said.
The lottery ticket was purchased at a Plaid Pantry convenience store in the northeast part of the city, Oregon Lottery said in a statement.
Oregon Lottery is working with the person in a process that involves security measures and vetting that will take time before a winner is announced.
“This is an unprecedented jackpot win for Oregon Lottery,” Oregon Lottery Director Mike Wells said in the statement. “We’re taking every precaution to verify the winner before awarding the prize money.”
“Plaid Pantry is thrilled to learn that one of our 104 Oregon stores sold the $1.3 billion dollar Powerball ticket,” Plaid Pantry President and CEO Jonathan Polonsky said in the statement.
Lottery winners frequently choose to remain anonymous if allowed, which can help them avoid requests for cash from friends, strangers and creditors.
Oregon has no such law, but it gives winners up to a year to come forward.
Long time coming
The odds of winning a Powerball drawing are 1 in 292 million, and no one had won one since Jan. 1. The 41 consecutive drawings without a winner until Sunday tied the game’s two longest droughts ever, which happened in 2021 and 2022, according to the lottery.
The drawing was supposed to happen Saturday, but it didn’t happen until early Sunday morning due to technical issues. Powerball needed more time for one jurisdiction to complete a pre-drawing computer verification of every ticket sold.
The odds of winning are so small that a person is much more likely to get struck by lightning at some point than to win a Powerball or Mega Millions jackpot even if you played every drawing of both over 80 years. Yet with so many people putting down money for a chance at life-changing wealth, somebody just did it again.
How big is the jackpot?
It’s the eighth-largest lottery jackpot in U.S. history and the fourth-largest Powerball win — the other four were Mega Millions prizes. The largest jackpot win was a $2 billion Powerball prize sold to a man who bought the ticket in California in 2022.
Every state except Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Nevada and Utah, plus Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands takes part in the two lotteries, which are run by the Multi-state Lottery Association. So how much is $1.3 billion?
If the winner got to take home the entire jackpot in a single payout and didn’t have to pay taxes, it would still be nowhere near the $227 billion net worth of the world’s richest person, Elon Musk. But it would still put the winner in the very exclusive club of the fewer than 800 billionaires in the United States.
It would also be bigger than the gross domestic product of the Caribbean nations of Dominica, Grenada, and St. Kitts and Nevis. And it would be enough to buy certain professional hockey teams and would be more than Taylor Swift grossed on her recent record-breaking tour.
But taxes, man
They’re as inevitable as winning the Powerball jackpot is not.
Even after taxes — 24 percent federal and 8 percent Oregon — the winner’s lump-sum payment would top $400 million, or the minimum cost to rebuild the recently destroyed Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore.
For somebody, it’s a bridge to a new life.