Winning $1.537-billion Mega Millions ticket sold in South Carolina; 3 tickets in L.A. County match 5 numbers

Reporting from DES MOINES, Iowa —  Lottery officials said Wednesday that someone bought a ticket in South Carolina to win the Mega Millions jackpot with a final total of $1.537 billion, shy of the all-time world record.

While there are no new billionaires in California, some lucky players in the Golden State still took home some cash following the drawing. Eight tickets sold in California matched five out of the six numbers drawn. The winning numbers Tuesday were 5, 28, 62, 65, 70 and Mega Ball 5.

Three of the tickets with five matching numbers were sold in Los Angeles County at a 7-Eleven store on Lassen Street in Chatsworth, a Chevron station on East Live Oak Avenue in Arcadia and a Circle K convenience store on Rosecrans Avenue in Norwalk.

The others were sold in San Luis Obispo, Stockton, Rancho Cucamonga, San Diego and San Francisco. Those tickets are worth $562,472 each, according to lottery officials.

The winning ticket sold Tuesday in South Carolina is worth about $877.8 million in a lump-sum cash payment, which most winners choose to take, rather than collect the full amount in annual payments over three decades.

The earlier Mega Millions estimate of $1.6 billion would have been a world record for lotteries, but actual sales came in below the $1.586-billion Powerball jackpot prize shared by winners in California, Florida and Tennessee in January 2016.

“The final total was less than the $1.6-billion estimate,” said Carol Gentry, a spokeswoman for the Maryland Lottery, which leads a consortium of state lotteries participating in the Mega Millions jackpot.

“Estimates are based on historical patterns,” she explained Wednesday morning in a phone interview with the Associated Press. “The jackpot’s been rolling since it was hit in July in California, but there are few precedents for a jackpot of this size. Typically, about 70% of sales occur on the drawing day, so forecasting precise numbers in advance can be difficult. That’s why we always use the term estimate.”

It’s possible the world will never know who bought the ticket that matches all six numbers in Tuesday night’s drawing. South Carolina is one of eight states — along with Delaware, Georgia, Kansas, Maryland, North Dakota, Ohio and Texas — where winners can remain anonymous.

“Our board has a policy to protect the winner because of all the risk associated with having that much money,” South Carolina Education Lottery Director William Hogan Brown told ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

South Carolina’s previous record-holder — someone who bought a $400-million Powerball ticket in the Columbia area in 2013 — never wanted to be identified.

Holli Armstrong, spokeswoman for the South Carolina Education Lottery, said the retailer will get a $50,000 payout. Brown said the store’s identity should be revealed by midday on Wednesday, once state authorities have law enforcement resources in place to help with the attention.

The biggest Mega Millions jackpot winner prior to this was a $656-million ticket sold back in 2012, Gentry said, “so it’s a record for Mega Millions and it came very close to breaking the world record of all the jackpots.”

The lucky player overcame miserable odds: The chance of matching all six numbers and winning the top prize was 1 in 302.5 million.

Mega Millions is played in 44 states as well as in the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The Mega Millions jackpot grew so large because it had been nearly three months since a player had matched all six numbers and won the top prize. The last time that happened was July 24, when 11 co-workers from California won a $543-million prize.

Although Tuesday’s jackpot was extraordinarily large, it’s no fluke. It reflects a trend toward ever-growing lottery prizes due to changes in the game that worsened the odds with hopes that bigger jackpots would result in better sales.

Officials with the Powerball game were the first to make that move in October 2015 when changing the odds of winning the jackpot from 1 in 175 million to 1 in 292.2 million. Mega Millions followed suit in October 2017, resulting in the odds worsening from 1 in 259 million to 1 in 302.5 million.

Though most attention has been on the Mega Millions game, Powerball also has been soaring. The estimated prize for Powerball’s annuity option in Wednesday night’s drawing is $620 million, with a cash prize of $354.3 million.

Times staff writers Hailey Branson-Potts and Hannah Fry contributed to this report.

UPDATES:

7:15 a.m.: This article was updated with information about tickets sold in California.

6:15 a.m.: This article was updated with a final jackpot total of $1.537 billion.

This article was originally published at 3:05 a.m.