Winner of $1.08BN Powerball jackpot is finally revealed – and the good news is there’s another massive prize up for grabs tonight
The mysterious winner of last summer’s $1.08 billion Powerball jackpot was finally revealed on Friday.
Yanira Alvarez was identified as the lucky winner after purchasing the ticket at Las Palmitas Mini Market, a small supermarket in downtown Los Angeles.
Her victory in July marked the end of a 39-draw jackpot run for Powerball and the first of two consecutive billion-dollar winning tickets sold in California, lottery officials said.
The lucky lady opted for the one-time amount of $558.1 million instead of the $1.08 billion paid out in annual increments.
The next Powerball drawing is scheduled for Saturday evening, with an estimated jackpot of $935 million or a cash value of $452.3 million, as no one has won the top prize for 37 consecutive drawings.
Yanira Alvarez has been identified as the lucky winner of last summer’s $1.08 billion Powerball jackpot
Her win last July marked the end of a 39-draw jackpot run for Powerball and the first of two consecutive billion-dollar winning tickets sold in California, lottery officials said.
Alvarez’s prize was the third largest in the game’s history at the time of the drawing, but now ranks fourth after Theodorus Struyck, another California resident, won the $1.75 billion jackpot last October.
Struyck signed on earlier this month to represent a group of winners who purchased the ticket at Midway Market & Liquor in Frazier Park, about an hour’s drive from Los Angeles.
“Announcing big wins in this way gives all of our players the opportunity to hope and dream that they can be next,” Harjinder K. Shergill Chima, director of the California Lottery, said in a news release.
DailyMail.com revealed last year that Las Palmitas Mini Market, the market where the billion-dollar ticket was sold, is just blocks from LA’s Skid Row homeless camps.
Store owner Nabor Herrera, who received a $1 million bonus for selling the ticket, said he only realized he had sold the winning ticket when he arrived at work early Thursday and saw cameras camped out in front of the store.
“I’m telling you, it’s a surprise to me, I didn’t know what it is – filming or anything,” the father of four shared KTLA TV.
Store owner Nabor Herrera, who received a $1 million bonus for selling the ticket, said he only realized he had sold the winning ticket when he arrived at work early Thursday and saw cameras camped out in front of the store.
A narrow hole in the wall with shelves full of snacks and other items, the store is not far from poverty-stricken Skid Row
DailyMail.com revealed last year that Las Palmitas Mini Market, the market where the billion-dollar ticket was sold, is just blocks from LA’s Skid Row homeless camps.
Herrera, who has owned the store for seven years, said he had sold a lot of Powerball tickets in recent days, mostly to locals in the area.
The retailer said he planned to use his $1 million seller bonus to expand his business and perhaps take his family on a “week-long vacation” to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.
The store was also just 13 miles from the supermarket where Powerball winner Edwin Castro bought his ticket for November’s $2.04 billion jackpot – the largest in US history.
Powerball is played in 45 states, as well as Washington DC, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.
Lottery jackpots have become bigger in recent years, following changes that extended the odds and made winning more difficult.
The store is also just 13 miles from the supermarket where Powerball winner Edwin Castro (right) bought his ticket for November’s $2.04 billion jackpot – the largest in US history.
Lottery jackpots have become bigger in recent years, following changes that extended the odds and made winning more difficult
In 2015, the Powerball lottery extended the odds of winning from 1 in 175.2 million to 1 in 292.2 million.
Mega Millions followed two years later and increased the odds of winning the top prize from 1 in 258.9 million to 1 in 302.6 million.
The largest lottery payout in US history was a whopping $2.04 billion Powerball jackpot that took place on November 8, 2022, with the winning ticket sold in California.
The largest Mega Millions jackpot was $1.537 billion, won by an anonymous player in South Carolina on October 23, 2018.
The rich $1 billion Powerball payout, and a separate Mega Millions jackpot of as much as $720 million, sparked a surge in ticket sales at convenience stores and gas stations across the country on Wednesday.
It’s only the fifth time that the jackpots from both draws have exceeded $500 million simultaneously, and the combined payout of $1.72 billion is the fifth largest in history, according to data provided to DailyMail.com by Lottery critic.