US Powerball Third Largest Jackpot Ever... 1st Prize of 1.4 Trillion Won Created

No Winner for 38 Draws Since April, Rolled Over
Lottery Vendor Receives 1.27 Billion Won in Bonus

The first-place winner of the US Powerball lottery, whose jackpot had rolled over 38 times and reached a staggering 1.4 trillion won, has finally been announced.

On the 20th (local time), local media are covering the scene in front of Las Palmitas Minimarket in California, USA, where the Powerball first prize winner emerged.
[Photo by Reuters]

On the 20th (local time), CNN reported that the Powerball jackpot winner from the drawing on the 19th was found at a convenience store in Los Angeles (LA), California. The jackpot this time was $1.08 billion (approximately 1.4 trillion won), making it the third-largest Powerball jackpot ever and the sixth-largest lottery prize in US history. The reason the jackpot grew so large was that no winner had been drawn for 38 consecutive draws since April 19.

The first-place prize can be claimed either as a lump sum or an annuity. If the annuity option is chosen, the $1.08 billion will be paid out over 29 years. The lump sum payment before taxes is $558.1 million (approximately 700 billion won). Additionally, the lottery retailer that sold the winning ticket, Las Palmitas Mini Market, will receive a congratulatory bonus of about $1 million (approximately 1.27 billion won) from Powerball.

Powerball tickets are sold in 45 of the 50 US states, Washington DC, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands. To win the Powerball jackpot, players must match all six numbers: five white balls numbered 1 to 69, and one red Powerball numbered 1 to 26. The odds of winning the jackpot with a $2 ticket are 1 in 292.2 million, which is much lower than the odds of winning first prize in Korea’s Lotto, which are 1 in 8,145,060.

The largest lottery prize ever won worldwide, including the US, was the $2.04 billion Powerball jackpot hit in November last year (approximately 2.6 trillion won). That jackpot had rolled over 40 times without a winner, surpassing the previous record of $1.586 billion from January 2016. Moreover, the record jackpot was won by a single individual, who took the entire amount.

The lucky winner is a man named Edwin Castro, whose other personal details have not been disclosed. However, he expressed in a written statement that "winning is truly shocking and exhilarating." Castro instantly rose to 1,292nd place on the global wealth rankings due to his lottery win. It was also reported that he decided to take the lump sum payment, accepting that more than half of the prize money would go to taxes.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.