The Billion Dollar Lottery Winner in California: A Closer Look 12-29-2024

One Mega Millions ticket sold in Northern California has won Friday's estimated $US 1.22 billion ($1.96 billion) jackpot – believed to be the fifth-largest prize in the history of the game, the US lottery says.
The ticket – the first to win the jackpot in over 100 days – matched all six winning numbers: 3, 7, 37, 49, 55 and Mega Ball 6.
Friday's Mega Millions jackpot amounts to $884 million in cash. The prize surged since its last drawing on Christmas Eve, when no winner took home the estimated $1.6 billion jackpot.
Friday's grand prize was previously estimated at $1.85 billion but grew ahead of the highly-anticipated drawing.
The winning ticket was sold at Sunshine Food & Gas in Cottonwood, Shasta County, according to the California State Lottery.
The store will get a $1.6 million bonus for selling the ticket, the lottery said in a news release – the most a store can earn.
Ishar Gill, whose family has owned and operated the store for the past 20 years, was shocked by Friday's win. "It didn't really set in until we saw the California lottery post that said, 'this is where the ticket was sold,'" Gill, who manages the store for his father, told CNN.
"The whole family was excited."
The store saw more traffic ahead of the billion-dollar jackpot drawing, selling a little over 1000 tickets on Friday, Gill told CNN.
That's significantly more than they would sell on a normal day, he added.
"I would say 75 per cent of our daily customers are locals," Gill said.
"We get a lot of support from our local community and basically almost everyone knows each other."
Still, the family does not know who purchased the winning ticket, Gill said.
As for the cash bonus, Gill says the family plans to give back to their close-knit community.
"Whatever we can do to help," he said.
Friday's win is only the fourth Mega Millions jackpot won in 2024 and just the seventh time in the game's history that the jackpot has soared past $1.6 billion.

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