Three ticket holders with a claim on a record $US1.6 billion ($NZ2.47 billion) Powerball jackpot were laying low, their identities officially still a mystery even as lottery officials revealed the retailers in California, Florida and Tennessee that sold them the lucky tickets.
Each of the winning tickets is worth $US528.8 million ($NZ817 million) to the holders, lottery officials said in California, one of 44 states plus Washington DC and two US territories that sold millions of Powerball tickets.
The winning numbers of 08 27 34 04 19 and Powerball 10, picked in a drawing on Wednesday night, appeared on tickets sold in three stores: a 7-Eleven convenience store in Chino Hills, California, a Publix supermarket in Melbourne Beach, Florida and Naifeh's Food Mart in Munford, Tennessee. The jackpot winners overcame odds of 1 in 292 million.
"The Chino Hills winner has not come forward yet," California Lottery said on its Twitter feed, but local media reports said the winner there was a 62-year-old Pomona, California nurse who received a ticket from her boss.
KABC said the winner is a senior registered nurse at Park Avenue Health Care and Wellness Center. The Nursing home owner bought 18,000 tickets for his employees and residents at 80 nursing homes across California, it reported, citing a spokesman for the owner.
Nursing home officials were not immediately available for comment.
At a media conference in front of the California 7-Eleven, lottery officials presented a symbolic check for $US1 million to the owner of the franchise, Balbir Atwal, for selling a jackpot winning ticket. He said he would give some of the bonus money to charity and share some of it with his friends and family.
Cheering crowds swarmed the suburban Los Angeles store and its parking lot late on Wednesday (local time).
With each state setting its own lottery rules, the Tennessee retailer, located in a Memphis suburb, received $US25,000 and the Florida retailer, located in a tiny coastal town, will get $US100,000 at an undetermined date, lottery officials said.
The announcement of the winners came after the previous 19 drawings produced no jackpot winners. With the grand prize rolling over each time, the bounty soared to a record $US1.586 billion, fueled by what had become a national preoccupation with Powerball and the prospect of taking home untold riches.
In towns and cities across the country, millions of would-be billionaires, many of them who had never before played a lottery, stood in long lines to buy tickets.
It was the largest lottery prize ever offered in North America, and no other lottery in the world had ever featured a jackpot of that size that could be won on a single ticket.
The winners in Florida and Tennessee have not come forward, lottery officials in those states said.
Under the rules, a winner has up to a year to do so. All three states with winners have laws requiring their names to be released publicly, according to the Powerball website.
Multi-year payout
To receive the full jackpot amount, winners must accept a multi-year annuity, whereas the lump sum cash payout for the jackpot was about $US983.5 million, lottery officials said.
In November, a Tennessee ticket holder claimed a $US144.1 million prize.
Aside from the jackpot winners in Wednesday's drawing, some 26 million ticket holders won smaller prizes ranging from $US2 million to $US4, depending on the combination of numbers matched in the Powerball drawing, said Kelly Cripe, spokeswoman for the Texas lottery.
For every $1 worth of Powerball sales, half goes to prizes, 40% is earmarked for things such as education, and 10% goes to retailers who sell the tickets and administrative costs, Grief said.
The cycle will start again on Saturday night when the next Powerball drawing will have an estimated jackpot of $40 million, according to the lottery operator's website.
