Powerball officials are urging players to check their tickets after one lucky player turned a $2 ticket into nearly $80,000.
The winning ticket, sold at a Circle K store in Chino Hills, California—about 35 miles from Los Angeles—matched four numbers plus the Powerball. This combination typically wins $50,000, but due to prize variations based on ticket sales and other winners in the state, the prize grew to nearly $80,000.
The odds of hitting this combination are about 1 in 913,000. While impressive, the ticket holder missed the $177 million jackpot by just one number.
Since no one claimed the top prize in Monday night’s draw, the jackpot has rolled over and now stands at an estimated $189 million, with a lump-sum cash value of $83.1 million.
Meanwhile, a player in Oregon matched five numbers with the Power Play option and took home $2 million. Over 290,000 other players won prizes ranging from $4 to $100,000 on Monday.
So far this year, there have been three Powerball jackpot winners:
- Linda Grizzle and her son won $167.3 million in Kentucky before Mother’s Day.
- A California player hit a $526.5 million jackpot in March.
- Abbas Shafii from Oregon claimed a $328.5 million prize, choosing the lump sum payout of $146.4 million.
Jackpot winners can choose between a lump-sum payment or an annuity spread over 30 years.
The biggest Powerball win in history remains Edwin Castro’s $2.04 billion prize, won in November 2022.
