A winning ticket with all six numbers in Saturday night’s Powerball drawing – worth $526.5 million – was sold in Anaheim.
The winner has the option of receiving the jackpot in 30 installments or a lump sum of around $243.8 million, the California Lottery announced. Both options are before taxes.
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The $526.5 million was revised upward from initial reports that pegged it at around $515 million, the Powerball website said.
The 7-Eleven store that sold the ticket is at 763 North Euclid Street, south of La Palma Avenue.
It wasn’t immediately known who purchased the ticket or when it would be claimed.
RMG News, an independent news video provider, reported a store worker, having learned the winning ticket was sold there, called the store owner on Saturday evening and told them: “It’s a jackpot from our store.”
“We got it, someone bought it from here … We are very happy,” the unidentified worker said.
The store owner will get the maximum bonus of $1 million from the California Lottery, said Carolyn Becker, lottery spokesperson, on Sunday.
A steady stream of customers flowed in and out of the Anaheim store during a mostly quiet Sunday morning, walking out with milk, bottled water and in some cases, Scratchers.
Some passersby in their vehicles slowed down at the sight of TV news vans in the parking lot, a few of them rolling down their windows to ask, “What happened?” before hearing the news that a winning ticket had been sold.
Scott Heathcote, a retired Army Reserve officer, said he was jealous when he heard the news that someone had bought a winning ticket at the store that he frequents once a week to get a newspaper.
He said he’s purchased tickets in other nearby stores. If he won, he said, he’d “work on my house, upgrade a car” and help his friend whose muscle car was recently stolen in the Bay Area.
Heathcote then had second thoughts about trading in his Honda Civic for a Porsche.
“Maybe I’ll keep the Honda for getting milk and going to the gym,” he said. He took photos of the news vans outside before driving off in his Civic.
The store owner said the corporate 7-Eleven office asked him not to give interviews.
The numbers drawn Saturday evening were 7, 11, 21, 53, 61 and the Powerball number was 2.
The drawing was the 29th since the last time a ticket with all six numbers was sold.
There were five tickets sold with five numbers, but missing the Powerball number — two in Georgia and one each in Ohio, Oregon and Texas, according to the Multi-State Lottery Association, which conducts the game. They are each worth $1 million.
The odds of matching all five numbers and the Powerball number is 1 in 292.2 million, according to the Multi-State Lottery Association. The overall chance of winning a prize is 1 in 24.9.
The Powerball game is played in 45 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands.
The jackpot for Monday’s drawing will be $20 million.
Winning Powerful jackpots have gone over $1 billion in recent years.
The highest one, a $2.04 billion jackpot, was won in Southern California in a Powerball drawing on Nov. 7, 2022. That ticket was sold at Joe’s Service Center in Altadena.
The winner, Edwin Castro, elected to take the lump sum, which was a little more than $997 million, Becker said.
Castro declined to appear at a press conference in Sacramento announcing the winner. Instead, he sent a statement expressing how stunned he was, but also his support of how the Lottery helps fund public education.
“As much as I am shocked and ecstatic to have won the Powerball drawing, the real winner is the California public school system,” he said. “The mission of the California Lottery, which is to provide supplemental funding for California public education – both public schools and colleges – makes this a huge win for the state. As someone who received the rewards of being educated in the California public education system, it’s gratifying to hear that, as a result of my win, the California school system greatly benefits as well.”
Joseph Chahayed, the owner of Joe’s Service Center, earned a $1 million bonus as the retailer who sold Castro that winning ticket.
The $526.5 million winner was the second Powerball jackpot won this year; the jackpot was previously won on Jan. 18, by an Oregon lottery player who claimed a $328.5 million prize, the lottery said in a news release.
Nerdwallet explained how the jackpots differ from the cash value of winning tickets:
“When a lottery like Powerball advertises a big jackpot, like the $1.326-billion prize won in April 2024, it doesn’t have that sum sitting in a vault, ready to be handed to the next winner. Instead, lottery jackpots are calculated based on how much money you’d get if the sum of the current prize pool were invested in an annuity for three decades. That means you would eventually get the full sum, but it would take 30 years.
“With the annuity option, you would receive a first payment when you win, followed by 29 annual payments that increase each year by 5%. If you were to die before all the annual payments were made, the rest would become part of your estate.”
Becker said most big winners take the lump sum.
If a player recognizes that they have a gambling problem or if someone knows of someone who may have a problem, the California Lottery recommends calling the California Problem Gambling Help Line at 1-800-GAMBLER.
City News Service contributed to this report.