The owner of the store that sold the winning ticket to the $2.04 billion Powerball lottery prize won $1 million and said that he would share his winnings with his children and 11 grandchildren.
Joe Chahayed, who owns Joe's Service Center in California, happily held up the massive $1 million check outside his gas station on Woodbury Road. During a press conference with the California Lottery, he said that he and his family were excited that they could finally afford what they needed.
Powerball Lottery Winning Ticket
Chahayed's son, who was also present during the press conference, said that no one else deserves the money more than his father. He added that his dad had worked hard his entire life and deserved every last penny of the winnings.
The winning ticket that the store sold had the numbers 10, 33, 41, 47, and 56, and Powerball 10 is believed to belong to a local. However, the state's first-ever lottery billionaire has not yet come forward to collect their historic lottery winnings, as per Daily Mail.
The store owner said that he had a feeling that someone could win the money and he added he was excited to see that one of the residents of the "poor" neighborhood was able to win a lot of money.
On top of amassing a historic $2.04 billion lottery prize, $156 million was also raised for California Public Schools. Chahayed added that the California Lottery met with him at his store "before open" to tell him about the news.
According to KTLA, in the same press conference, California Lotto spokeswoman Carolyn Becker said that someone was holding onto a very important piece of paper that was worth $2.04 billion.
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Historic Lottery Prize
The store owner came to the United States from Syria in the 1980s in an attempt to create a better life for himself. He added that he and his family worked really hard to open and manage their own store.
Other than the jackpot-winning lottery ticket, three other tickets matched five numbers in California, which were sold in Gardena, Beaumont, and San Francisco. There were also tickets worth $1 million that were sold in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, New Jersey, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, and Washington.
The $2.04 billion Powerball lottery prize is by far the largest prize that has ever been won, topping the last record of $1.586 billion that was won by three Powerball ticket holders in 2016. There have only been four previous jackpots that reached $1 billion, none of which were close to the current prize, which started out at $20 million on Aug. 6 of this year.
Three months after no one was able to win the jackpot in the lottery, the prize ballooned to an unprecedented $2 billion. The drawing of the lottery on Monday was delayed for several hours by a security process hiccup. The California Lottery said that more time was needed to complete the required security protocols, which resulted in the delay, NBC Los Angeles reported.
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