Powerball Jackpot Soars To $400 Mil As Numbers Miss For 15th-Straight Time
The Powerball numbers that came up last night in the Tallahassee, Florida, drawing for the twice-weekly 43-state lottery again matched no ticket, sending the jackpot for Wednesday’s numbers to a mouth-watering $400 million. That would equal the fourth-highest Powerball jackpot in the game’s 22-year history.
The Powerball lottery has now picked 15 straight numbers without a jackpot winner. Only five times in Powerball history has the game gone 16 or more drawings without someone hitting all six numbers.
Wednesday’s estimated $400 million jackpot is, of course, the annuity amount, which would be paid out in 30 annual checks averaging $13, 333,333 each before taxes. Most players pick the “lump-sum cash” option, which is paid out all at once, but in a lesser total. If there is a Powerball winner on February 19, that lucky person would collect a single check for $227.8 million — using the “lump sum” payment method.
Even without a big winner last night, the Powerball numbers still made more than a million people at least a little bit richer and created 10 overnight millionaires.
Were you one of them? Check your ticket against the following numbers to find out:
2 — 9 — 14 — 21 — 23 Powerball: 3
The 10 tickets that hit the first five numbers but not the Powerball number were sold in Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas. Those tickets are worth one million each, except the one sold in Texas where the lucky ticket-buyer paid an extra dollar for the Power Play option, the independent lottery-watching site USA Mega reported.
That person’s ticket is worth $2 million, as a result. Florida and Michigan each had a pair of overnight millionaires.
There were 108 ticket buyers nationwide who, tantalizingly, hit four of the first five numbers plus the Powerball number. Of those, 16 used the Power Play option, taking home $30,000, while 12 were in California which uses a pari-mutuel system, making the “4+1” tickets worth slightly less than $6,000. The rest of those tickets won a $10,000 prize.
If there is a winner on Wednesday, the IRS would extract a $56.95 million piece, leaving a lump-sum winner of the Powerball jackpot with $170,850,000 to take home.
