Whoever bought the winning ticket in the $290 million Mega Millions lottery drawing couldn't have been much happier Saturday than the person who sold it.
Jay Patel, owner of Powers Liquors, was elated as he waited along with everyone else to find out which one of his customers won the huge jackpot in Friday's drawing with the numbers 10-25-38-39-50 and Mega Ball 12.
A hand-lettered sign that read, "We sold $290 million's jackpot here" hung in the window of the store Patel called "the luckiest Powers Liquors in the world right now."
Patel will receive $50,000 for selling the ticket. "There's no word to describe it, but it feels good," he said.
Patel said in the days before the drawing he sold about 5,000 tickets from his store in a strip mall in a racially diverse area of this working class city 30 miles north of Boston.
The $290 million is the highest Mega Millions prize in the game's history, exceeding the previous high of $239 million in February. The odds of winning were 135 million to 1.
The biggest single-ticket winner was a Powerball jackpot of $314.9 million awarded on Christmas Day 2002 to a West Virginia man. But Mega Millions' predecessor, the Big Game, had a prize of $363 million split between two winning families in May 2000.
Other states that participate in the 11-state Mega Millions lottery are Georgia, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Texas, Virginia and Washington.
$50,000 is only 0.017% of the jackpot. That's 1/100 of 1%. Pretty stingy for such a huge jackpot. Massachusetts pays sellers of winning tickets of other jackpot games 1%. If Mr. Patel had received 1%, he would have got $2,900,000.
$50,000 is only 0.017% of the jackpot. That's 1/100 of 1%. Pretty stingy for such a huge jackpot. Massachusetts pays sellers of winning tickets of other jackpot games 1%. If Mr. Patel had received 1%, he would have got $2,900,000.