Someone in California plunked down at least $2 in Wednesday’s Powerball drawing — and is now an overnight multimillionaire.
The lucky ticketholder picked all six winning numbers — 1, 17, 35, 49 and 54, with a Powerball of 34 — to hit the $425 million Powerball jackpot, California lottery officials said.
That makes it the sixth-largest jackpot in U.S. lottery history. The winner could choose to get the cash in a $242.2 million lump sum, officials said.
The winning ticket was sold at a Chevron station in Milpitas, in the heart of the Silicon Valley. The store will get a $1 million bonus for selling the ticket.
Cashier Sohal Singh told NBC Bay Area the station’s owner is also named “Mr. Singh.”
Another store employee, Gurdharam Sohel, said he was “very excited” to know his store sold the big prize, the San Jose Mercury News reported.
“When we got the call, we thought it was a fake number,” Sohel told the newspaper. “We didn’t believe it was real until the media came.”
The winner didn’t immediately come forward Wednesday night, but California lottery rules require that the person's name is publicly disclosed.
The Powerball prize amount had been swelling since the last jackpot on Christmas Day, and it has rolled over 15 times, increasing in value after each drawing since then, lottery officials said.
The biggest winner in Powerball history took home $590 million before taxes in a drawing last May.