Man drops $5 on lottery ticket at a local store. By morning, they wake up to a $980 million problem

Someone in Georgia just became a whole lot richer after picking up a Mega Millions ticket at their local grocery store. The ticket matched every single number in the November 14 drawing and won the $980 million jackpot. The numbers that came up were 1, 8, 11, 12, and 57, plus the Mega Ball number 7.

According to NBC News, the winning ticket came from a Publix supermarket on North Highway 29 in Newnan, which is roughly 40 miles away from Atlanta. The store is getting a nice bonus too, with $50,000 coming their way for selling the lucky ticket. Georgia Lottery President and CEO Gretchen Corbin talked about how thrilled everyone was about this massive win.

This is now the biggest lottery win anyone in Georgia has ever seen. Before this, the state’s top prize was $478.2 million from a Powerball ticket someone bought in Buford last October. Now the winner has to figure out what to do with all that money. They can take the whole $980 million spread out over 30 years, or grab $452.2 million all at once before taxes get taken out.

The winner might stay anonymous forever

Here’s something interesting about Georgia. If you win more than $250,000 in the lottery there, you can keep your name secret if you want to. All you need to do is write a letter saying you want to stay private. So there’s a good chance nobody will ever find out who won this huge jackpot. The winner has half a year from the drawing to come forward and claim what they won.

This drawing wrapped up the longest losing streak Mega Millions has ever had. There were 40 drawings in a row where nobody won the big prize, starting after someone in Virginia took home $348 million back in June. 

Your chances of winning this thing are terrible, just 1 in 290.5 million. Other lottery winners have found success using unconventional methods to pick their numbers, though those prizes were significantly smaller.

When you look at all the Mega Millions jackpots since the game started in 2002, this one comes in eighth place. Every jackpot bigger than this one was over $1 billion. The biggest one ever was $1.602 billion, which someone in Florida won back in August 2023.

Mega Millions changed things up pretty big this past April. Tickets went from costing $2 to $5, and now every ticket automatically gets a multiplier that can boost your winnings if you don’t hit the jackpot. They also bumped up the starting jackpot from $20 million to $50 million. The whole point was to make jackpots grow faster and give out bigger prizes across the board.

You can play Mega Millions in 45 different states, plus Washington D.C. and the U.S. Virgin Islands. They do the drawings twice a week on Tuesday and Friday nights at 11 p.m. Eastern time. When you buy a ticket, half of what you spend stays in whatever state you bought it in. 

In Georgia, that money goes toward helping students through things like the HOPE Scholarship and Pre-K programs. While this Georgia winner’s reaction remains unknown, other major lottery winners have had surprising responses to their fortune.