A 65-year-old California grandfather was identified Friday as a winner in October's historic $1.765 billion Powerball drawing, the second-largest jackpot the game has ever seen.
Theodorus Struyck represents a group of winners who went in for the lucky ticket at a store just 500 yards from Struyck's home in Frazier Park, Calif., a town of some 3,000 people, according to state lotto officials and local outlet KGET.
It was not immediately clear how many people were in the group, or how they planned to divide the 10-figure windfall.
Struyck came forward five months after the drawing, during which locals speculated whether an absent-minded neighbor might have misplaced their ticket to $1.765 billion.
"I thought for a while we were going to go down as the dumbest town on earth," local video store owner Jonathan Mathews told KGET. "Just to lose a ticket like that - I could only imagine."
But Struyck stepped up to claim the prize, in compliance with California state law requiring that lottery winners be publicly identified.
"He adores his grandchildren," neighbor Mary Dreier told KGET. "He's just really pleasant to have around. I noticed yesterday he put up that 'Posted: No Trespassing' sign."
Struyck's group can receive the full $1.765 billion through 30 payments made over 29 years or opt for a one-time lump sum of $774.1 million.
Midway Market, which sold the ticket, will also receive a $1 million bonus.
The win came a little under a year after fellow Californian Edwin Castro claimed the largest Powerball prize in history, a whopping $2.04 billion.
The odds of winning Powerball's top prize sit at 1 in 292,201,338.
