Mega Millions $1.6 billion winning ticket sold in South Carolina

Update:

A single winning ticket for Tuesday night's $1.6 billion Mega Millions lottery was sold in South Carolina, officials said.

"The moment we've been waiting for finally arrived, and we couldn't be more excited," said Gordon Medenica, Lead Director of the Mega Millions Group and Director of Maryland Lottery and Gaming. "This is truly a historic occasion. We're so happy for the winner, and we know the South Carolina Education Lottery can't wait to meet the lucky ticket holder."

South Carolina is one of the states that does not require lottery winners to reveal their identity, so we may never know the name of the new billionaire.

Other big winners

In addition to the jackpot winner, there were 36 second prize tickets - each matching the five white balls drawn Tuesday night. Eight were in California, four each in Florida and New York, two each in Massachusetts, Michigan, North Carolina, New Jersey and Virginia, and one each in Arizona, the District of Columbia, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin. The Texas winner and one of the Florida Match 5 winners included the optional Megaplier, so those two tickets are worth $3 million each.

For matching four white balls plus the Mega Ball, 419 tickets won the game's $10,000 third prize Tuesday night. Fifty-one of those are actually worth $30,000 each because they included the optional Megaplier.

In total, there were 15,750,013 winning tickets Tuesday night in addition to the jackpot winner.

The jackpot resets to its starting value of $40 million for the Friday, Oct. 26 drawing.

Earlier:

The winning numbers on Oct. 23 are 5-28-62-65-70 and Powerball 5.

Megaplier is 3x.

California lottery tweeted that no one in that state was the big winner. If no winner is found, the next drawing will be Friday and the jackpot will increase to $2 billion.

No winners: "No #MegaMillions jackpot winners in California. We're still waiting on results from other states. If no one wins tonight, Friday's jackpot is an estimated $2 BILLION!" #CALottery
-- California Lottery (@calottery) October 24, 2018

The Mega Millions lottery could grow to staggering amounts if there are no winners tonight.

Carole Gentry, spokesman for Maryland Lottery and Gaming, said the jackpot will grow to $2 billion if no one wins the big prize Tuesday night.

We will be live updating with the winners numbers when they are drawn Tuesday night at 11 p.m. ET (10 p.m. CT).

Earlier

Someone could become a billionaire tonight.

The drawing for the Mega Millions $1.6 billion - that's with a "b" - jackpot is tonight (Oct. 23). The $1.6 billion eclipses the $1.586 billion Powerball drawing held in January 2016, making tonight's jackpot the biggest ever.

The drawing is held at 11 p.m. ET and you can watch live here.

You can also see your state's feed of drawing here. (unless you're in Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Mississippi, Nevada or Utah - no lotteries there).

Tickets cost $2 each and cutoff times for sales vary from state to state but are generally an hour before the drawing.

You can go here to see where you can purchase your tickets.

Players pick six numbers from two separate pools of numbers - five different numbers from 1 to 70 and one number from 1 to 25 or select Easy Pick/Quick Pick to let the computer do the work for you. You win the jackpot by matching all six winning numbers in a drawing.

Even if you don't win the top jackpot, you may still bring home so money - prizes start at $2. Chances of winning the top prize are 1 in 302 million. If you do win, you can opt for the full amount paid out over 29 years or take the cash payout at $904 million.

The last Mega Millions jackpot hit was in the drawing held July 24, 2018, when a group of 11 co-workers in California shared a $543 million prize. There have been 25 drawings without a jackpot winner since then, but there have been more than 34.4 million winning tickets sold across the game's nine prize levels. The jackpot starts at $40 million and grows by a minimum of $5 million per draw each time it rolls over.

The winning numbers for the Oct. 19 drawing were the white balls 15, 23, 53, 65 and 70, plus the gold Mega Ball 7. While there was no jackpot winner on Friday, there were 15 second-tier winning tickets of at least $1 million, sold in California, Florida, Illinois (two), Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York (four), Texas (two, including one with the Megaplier for a $2 million prize) and Virginia (two). These tickets matched the five white balls but missed matching the Mega Ball.

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