As the saying goes, anything can happen in New Jersey.
Someone in the Garden State overcame the odds Tuesday night and won the $1.13 billion Mega Millions jackpot, becoming the game's first big winner of 2024 and smashing a winless streak that dates back to December.
The lucky ticket-holder matched all six numbers drawn – the white balls 7, 11, 22, 29 and 38, plus the gold Mega Ball 4 – to take home the estimated prize of $1.13 billion ($537.5 million cash).
The numbers were selected by the winner, not by Quick Pick -- and it was a one-off, meaning there were no other numbers selected on the ticket, lottery officials said. The winner also did not choose the cash option, but rather the annuity, meaning they'll get the payment doled out over the next 30 years.
Now it's the biggest jackpot ever won in New Jersey.
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The ticket was purchased at ShopRite Liquor on Route 66 in Neptune, Monmouth County.
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"If feels amazing that someone won. I was happy to sell it in my hometown," said Tiyanah Bambaata, the cashier who sold the winning ticket. She sold another Mega Millions ticket to her own mother, just an hour before the winning one was sold.
NJ lottery officials held a press conference there Wednesday to present the retailer with its $30,000 bonus check for selling the jackpot-winning-ticket. The owner of the ShopRite said he will be donating the bonus check money to the local food bank, Fulfill NJ.
The ticket-holder, meanwhile, has yet to come forward.
"I don't know who the winner is. We know where it was sold and when it was sold, but we don't know who it was sold to," James Carey, New Jersey Lottery Executive Director said. "If you are the winner, sign the back of the ticket, take a picture of it, make a copy of it, put it in a safe place "
"Tell only your closest loved ones, and then I'd urge you to talk to a financial advisor," Carey added. "Nobody is used to going from being a regular person to a millionaire or a hundred-millionaire overnight."
(Fun fact: a $1.6 billion Mega Millions ticket was sold last year in Neptune Beach, Florida. There are at least seven Neptunes in the U.S., for those who feel compelled to move.)
New Jersey lottery regulations allow the winner to choose to stay anonymous, so it's not certain we'll ever learn the person's identity.
Until the latest drawing, no one had matched all six numbers and won the Mega Millions jackpot since Dec. 8. That amounted to 30 straight drawings without a big winner. The odds of hitting the jackpot are 1 in 302.6 million.
The prize is the eighth-largest in U.S. lottery history and the fifth-largest in Mega Millions history, although because jackpots are always based on actual sales, the official jackpot amount will be determined after sales from all 47 participating jurisdictions are finalized on Wednesday morning.
“Congratulations to the New Jersey Lottery for selling a jackpot-winning ticket in Tuesday’s $1.13 billion Mega Millions drawing,” said Georgia Lottery President and CEO Gretchen Corbin, lead director of the Mega Millions Consortium. “We celebrate our new jackpot winner, as well as all the prizes won and dollars raised for good causes during this exciting jackpot run.”
The $1.12 billion jackpot is for a winner who is paid through an annuity, with an initial payment and then 29 annual payments. Most winners choose a cash payout, which would be $537.5 million.
Overall, there were a total of 3,693,854 winning tickets, including the single jackpot winner. Thirteen tickets matched the five white balls to win the game’s second-tier prize. One, sold in New York, is worth $2 million, because it included the optional Megaplier (available in most states with an extra $1 purchase), which was 2X Tuesday night. The other 12 second-tier prizes win the standard $1 million each, and were won in California, Colorado, Florida (2), Georgia (2), Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New York (2) and Ohio.
The next big U.S. lottery drawing will be Wednesday night for an estimated $865 million Powerball jackpot. No one has won that prize since New Year’s Day, making for 36 drawings without a winner.
Mega Millions is played in 45 states plus Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Powerball also is played in those states as well as Washington, D.C., the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
