It happens sometimes that two or three tickets win the Mega Millions or Powerball prize. Some of these split tickets are offered in different states. For example, tickets in California and Florida won the $502 million Mega Millions jackpot last year.
Of course, the most recent Mega Millions big win, which was $394 million over the weekend, was even stranger.
How did this take place?
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“We won’t know for sure how this happened until the prize is claimed,” said Carolyn Becker, the California Lottery’s deputy director of public relations. “There are many possible reasons. Someone may have wanted to try their luck on two different rows for some reason, or two friends may have wanted to try their luck with the same exact numbers.”
We might not know for sure how it turned out for a while. The California Lottery won’t even say for sure if the same player bought both tickets. It will be used in the study that is about to start to find the real winner (or winners).
Becker told Nexstar in the past that in California, it can take weeks or even months to confirm who the winner is. As part of this process, lottery workers, such as security and police officers, check to see if the person is a winner or a con artist.
“At least here in California, we have a very thorough process to check out big winners,” Becker said. “They aren’t even winners until that security review says they’re okay.”
There have been times like this in California before. Some news sources say that in December 2020, two winning SuperLotto Plus tickets were sold at a 7-Eleven in Vallejo. The fact that the prize was claimed by two people with the same last name made it even stranger.
They will win the fourth-largest Mega Millions jackpot of the year, no matter if one person played the same numbers or two people who have nothing to do with each other. The last person to win the prize was a trust from South Dakota in Texas on October 6. Since then, the prize has grown to $394 million, which is about $188.6 million in cash.
As of now, this year has been “highly unusual” for Mega Millions. Ten jackpots have been won in a single year for the first time in ten years.
A player from Maine won $1.348 billion on January 13, which was a great way to start the year. In August, someone in Florida won a huge $1.6 billion prize, which set a new record for the game.
Lottery officials say that the Mega Millions jackpot will start over at $20 million for the next drawing, which is planned for Tuesday.
One-dollar games can be bought in 45 states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands.