LANSING, Mich. — Four members of a Michigan lottery club will split the third-largest jackpot in U.S. lottery history, officials said Friday.
The names of the four people who won the $1.05 billion Mega Millions jackpot in Michigan on Jan. 22 remain a secret. The members of the Wolverine FLL Club cashed in by winning the largest prize in state lottery history, Michigan Lottery officials said in a news release.
The quartet matched all five numbers -- 4-26-42-50-60 -- and the Mega Ball 24, lottery officials said. The winning ticket was bought at a Kroger grocery store in Novi.
“A club member saw a sign that the jackpot was up to $1 billion and remembered that they hadn’t bought their tickets yet, so they pulled into the Kroger,” the club’s representative and attorney, Kurt D. Panouses, told Michigan Lottery officials. “When you play of course you dream of winning, but the reality of it has been incredible.
“This kind of money will impact the families of our club members for generations to come. We plan to stay humble and pay it forward through charitable giving in southeast Michigan.”
The Wolverine FLL Club decided to receive the jackpot in a one-time lump-sum payment of about $776 million, according to the news release. After deducting federal income tax withholdings of 24% (about $186 million) and a 4.25% state tax (about $33 million), club members received about $557 million to split.
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The odds of winning the jackpot were 1:302,575,350.
Previously, the largest lottery prize ever won by a Michigan player was a $337 million Powerball jackpot won on Aug. 15, 2012, according to the news release.
The Kroger store that sold the winning ticket received a $50,000 bonus commission, lottery officials said. The store announced it would donate the money to the Food Bank Council of Michigan.
The national and world record for a lottery jackpot is $1.586 billion. That Powerball jackpot was won on Jan. 13, 2016, and split between three winning tickets in California, Florida, and Tennessee. The second-largest prize was a $1.537 billion jackpot won on Oct. 23, 2018, by a South Carolina player, lottery officials said.
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