One “lucky” ticket-holder in Illinois won the ninth-largest jackpot in the history of the Mega Millions game on Tuesday night.
The $552 million jackpot is the largest ever won by an online lottery player in the U.S. The winner purchased the ticket using the lottery app. Illinois, along with nine other states and the District of Columbia, allow Mega Millions tickets to be purchased online, as reported by WFAA.
In order to win the full jackpot amount, players must correctly guess all six numbers, including five white balls and a sixth gold Mega ball. The winning numbers for Tuesday night’s drawing were 19 – 37 – 40 – 63 – 69 for the white balls, and the gold Mega ball was 17, per a news release issued by Mega Millions on Wednesday.
The jackpot winner has yet to identify themselves and has not announced how they will claim their prize. The cash option for payout is $260.2 million. In addition to the cash option, winners can choose to have the money dispersed over 30 years as an annuity; however, most take the cash option for payout, as WFAA reported.
There were 944,852 other winning tickets from the June 4 drawing. Two winners, one from California and the other from Maryland, chose the five white ball numbers and will take home the second-tier prize of $1 million, per the Mega Millions press release.
The third-tier prize is won by matching four white balls and the gold ball, which 27 tickets nationwide did successfully. Twenty-three of those winning ticket-holders will take home $10,000 each, and the remaining four will receive $30,000 each for including the Megaplier, worth three times the third-tier bonus.
The next Mega Millions drawing will occur on Friday, June 7, with a starting jackpot of $20 million, or a $9.4 million cash prize, according to the lottery company’s press release.
The top Mega Millions jackpots are as follows:
- $1.602 billion – August 8, 2023
- $1.537 billion – October 23, 2018
- $1.348 billion – January 13, 2023
- $1.337 billion – July 29, 2022
- $1.128 billion – March 26, 2024
- $1.050 billion – January 22, 2021
- $656 million – March 30, 2012
- $648 million – December 17, 2013
- $543 million – June 4, 2024
- $543 million – July 24, 2018