Wisconsin has double lottery jackpots for the first time ever
Posted: 1/10/2005 10:43:13 AM
Two big lottery jackpots were won in Wisconsin Saturday, the first time that winning tickets for the top prizes in Powerball and Megabucks were sold in the state on the same day, lottery officials said.
"That's never happened in 13 years" since the games began, Andrew Bohage, a spokesman for the Wisconsin State Lottery, said Sunday. "We haven't even figured out the odds of that happening."
A customer at the Thiensville Mobil Mart in Ozaukee County beat odds of 1 in 120 million to win Saturday's $36.8 million Powerball jackpot.
Someone who bought a Megabucks ticket from a Kwik Trip store in Marshall, in Dane County, won Saturday's $1.9 million jackpot for that game, Bohage said. The odds of winning a Megabucks jackpot is 1 in nearly 7 million.
"Oh, my God!" shouted Richard Frandsen, the Thiensville convenience store's assistant manager, when informed about someone's lucky purchase.
"We have been saying it's going to happen here someday," Frandsen said. "Nothing real serious has been won in this store." He defines serious as any lottery prize of more than $500.
The person responsible for breaking the store's jackpot drought had not come forward to claim the prize as of Sunday evening.
The winning Powerball numbers were 9, 11, 22, 24, 43 and the Powerball was 2.
Each of the jackpot winners has 180 days to claim the prize at the lottery's headquarters in Madison.
"I'm curious if this is a regular customer or someone passing through," Frandsen said. "We do have some junkies who will come in here and gamble every single day.
"I hope I sold that person the ticket," he said, noting that regular ticket buyers frequently promise to share winnings with the cashier.
"Some will tell us that they'll buy us a Cadillac or that we'll never have to work again in our lives if we sell them the winning ticket," Frandsen said.
The Mobil Mart is at 301 N. Main St. in Thiensville.
The state lottery office will determine Monday what day last week that the jackpot-winning tickets were sold, according to Bohage.
No one had won a Powerball jackpot in Wisconsin since July 2000 when a winning ticket was sold in Germantown. A Germantown resident and her son claimed a $10million prize.
Saturday's Powerball jackpot winner is the 11th in the state - and the first in Ozaukee County - since the game began in 1992, Bohage said.
The Thiensville business will receive a $100,000 commission from the state lottery for selling the ticket.
A commission of $38,000 will be paid to the Kwik Trip at 436 W. Main St. in Marshall.
This was the 57th Megabucks jackpot won since the Wisconsin-only game began. The game's top prize was won most recently in November in Walworth County by a resident of Palmyra. That man claimed a $1.1 million prize.
No one had stepped forward to claim the Megabucks prize as of Sunday evening. The winning numbers were 5, 13, 20, 43, 45 and 46.
Source: Journal Sentinel
