Mega Millions Winner? South Carolina Lottery Confirms Jackpot Ticket Sold

Update: 5:40 a.m. EDT - Mega Millions has officially confirmed there was only one winning ticket sold for the Tuesday drawing and as was reported earlier, it was sold in South Carolina. The results have been tallied and no other winning tickets were sold in any other states.

However, there is still no word on where in South Carolina the ticket was sold.

According to Lottery, the unidentified winner has up to 180 days to claim the prize and hence the winner might not come forward straight away. Apart from the single grand prize winning ticket, 36 people in the country bought the $1 million-prize ticket and 419 hopefuls ended up with the $10,000 prize. You can get details about the rest of the prizes here.

Original story:

At least one winning ticket for Tuesday’s record Mega Millions prize money of $1.6 billion was sold in South Carolina, the state’s lottery website has confirmed.

According to the South Carolina Education Lottery, at least one winning ticket was sold in the state, although it did not provide details on which store sold the ticket.

The Mega Millions winning numbers for Tuesday were 28-70-5-62-65 and the mega ball was five.

If you happened to purchase a ticket from South Carolina for Tuesday’s lottery, you are already one step ahead than the rest of the contenders. However, Mega Millions ticket holders from other states need not lose heart as the results of the latest drawing is still being tallied and lottery officials are likely to announce the final results Wednesday morning.

If you have bought the winning ticket, it is always recommended that you sign the back of your ticket before you go popping the champagne. This way, no one will be able to claim your ticket if you happen to lose it or it gets stolen.

The next step is to get in touch with your lottery retailer or lottery district office in order to start the process of claiming the reward.

Any jackpot winner has two options when it comes to claiming his or her winnings — take a one-time payout of $913 million (which is an option that most lottery winners opt for) or receive $1.6 billion winnings in annuity payments spread over 29 years.

Since the odds of drawing all six numbers in Mega Millions are one in nearly 302 million, there are more chances of a ticket holder getting a partial match to winning numbers, which also assures the individual a certain amount of prize money.

If you got all the five white numbers without the mega ball, your ticket is worth $1 million; similarly, four white numbers plus the mega ball gets you $10,000; just four white numbers amounts to $500; three white numbers plus the mega ball amounts to $200; three white numbers is $10; two white numbers plus the mega ball is $10; one white number plus the mega ball is $4; and matching the mega ball earns you $2.

The prize money for Mega Millions reached an all-time high this time because the last winning ticket was sold in July in California, after which it had been building up. If no winning ticket had been sold this time around too, the amount for the next Mega Millions drawings would have reached $2 billion, CBS-affiliated 3 News Now reported.

This is not the first time that a lottery has reached more than a billion in prize money. On Jan. 13, 2016, the Powerball lottery was worth $1.6 billion. At that time, the jackpot was split between three winners.

Other than Hawaii, Alaska, Nevada, Utah, Mississippi and Alabama, every other state in the United States participate in the Mega Millions lottery. After Mega Millions, even the Powerball’s jackpot for Wednesday is an estimated $620 million, which is the sixth largest of its kind in U.S. history.