Free Republic

Pricey picks: Powerball lottery tickets will double in price to $2 beginning in JanuaryBy Associated Press, Published: January 1 DES MOINES, Iowa — Powerball lottery organizers are betting that bigger jackpots will entice more people to play, but gamblers are going to have to dig deeper into their wallets to try their luck. Tickets for the multistate game are doubling in price to $2 beginning Jan 15. While the odds of winning one of the game’s giant jackpots also are improving, those in charge of the lottery are gambling that people are willing to pay more for the hope of...

of winning the Minnesota State Lottery would be a safer bet. The Burnsville couple, who Friday claimed a $228.9 million Powerball prize, the largest lottery payout in Minnesota history, weren't struggling but were wondering just days before whether they'd ever be able to retire. "On Monday, we met with our financial adviser, and things didn't look real promising," Kathleen Morris said during a Friday news conference at state lottery headquarters in Roseville. "That night I told Tom, the only way we're going to retire is if we win the lottery." Declining to give their ages, the couple said only that...

Gives a whole new meaning to the word Powerball.

TOLEDO, Ohio — A group of Michigan autoworkers won a share of a Powerball jackpot, and one of them has already splurged on a piece of Detroit muscle — a new Corvette. It also turns out the group picked the right guy to buy the lucky ticket, an Ohio man who had won a lottery jackpot before.....

Store clerk is winner of $258.5M Powerball lottery jackpotApr. 23, 2010, 7:56 a.m. The winning ticket for the biggest jackpot in Missouri history was sold at a convenience store in Marshall, and a store official said Thursday that the winner is a clerk who works at the store. Lottery officials announced Thursday that a Powerball ticket purchased at the city's Break Time convenience store hit all six numbers in Wednesday night's drawing. The $258.5 million jackpot is the biggest ever won in Missouri, and the 10th-biggest Powerball jackpot ever. Although the Lottery is waiting to verify the ticket before announcing...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Ginger Whittaker Bragg, daughter of Powerball winner Jack Whittaker, was found dead in her Daniels home, authorities said. Chief Deputy D.E. Stafford of the Raleigh County Sheriff's Department said in a press release that deputies were called to Bragg's Lake Drive home in the Glade Springs Resort Sunday afternoon after receiving a report of a dead person in the home. Deputies said Bragg, 42, died inside her home. Stafford said the department does not suspect foul play but is investigating. Bragg's father won a $314 million Powerball jackpot on Christmas Day 2002, then the largest amount ever...

PIERRE, S.D. -- A 23-year-old rancher whose family has fallen behind in their taxes and recently had a mobile home repossessed has claimed a $232.1 million Powerball jackpot on Friday, one of the largest undivided jackpots in U.S. lottery history.

WASHINGTON - The attorney for an 82-year-old southeast Washington man has claimed the $144 million Powerball lottery jackpot for his client. David Wilmot, the attorney, said Monday he was accepting the money on behalf of Rockson LLC - a corporation created to protect the man's identity. The winning ticket in the April 8 drawing came from the Giant grocery store on Alabama Avenue in southeast D.C. The jackpot winner is a widower with 10 children and 47 grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Wilmot says the man is taking the lump-sum payment of $79.6 million. -snip-

No doubt you felt a surge of Gopher Pride when you learned that a Waseca couple hit the Powerball. The big lottery jackpots always seem to go to people in far-away Cooter County. Bufus! Put down the banjo and git out of the tree, your daddy done won us some Britney-size money!They end up blowing through $150 million in a few years, which isn't surprising: You take an ordinary feller, give him unimaginable wealth, and he will justify building a catapult that throws Ferraris in the air so he can shoot them down with a shoulder-mounted missile launcher. Sure, he'll...

ROSEVILLE, Minn. - Paul and Sue Rosenau say they already have everything they need, so their lives won't change that much after winning a $180.1 million Powerball jackpot. "We realize that money is probably not as important as friendship and helping others. And that's what we hope to do with it," Paul Rosenau said at a news conference Tuesday when they accepted a ceremonial check. Rosenau, 54, is a heavy equipment operator and his wife, Sue, works at an agricultural research institute. The couple from Waseca will take the prize from last Saturday's drawing in a lump-sum of $59.6 million...

DES MOINES, Iowa -- The Powerball prize goes to an estimated $161 million Saturday. None of the tickets sold for Wednesday night's night drawing matched all six numbers drawn, which were: 9-16-21-30-52 and Powerball 9. The Power Play number was 2. Players matching all five numbers and the Powerball would have won or shared the $140.6 million jackpot. Click here to find out more! One ticket that matched the first five numbers but missed the Powerball was sold in Pennsylvania. That ticket holder will win $200,000. Eight other similar tickets were also sold, two each were sold in North Carolina...

Gettin' lucky in... Indiana? For the second time in less than a decade, the small town of Richmond, Ind., has sold a winning multimillion dollar Powerball ticket. After crowds of hopefuls lined up from Connecticut to Wisconsin to purchase Powerball tickets for the $314 million drawing, lottery officials announced over the weekend that the winning ticket had been sold in Richmond. "For something like that to happen twice in one town, definitely the people out here must be blessed," one man said. Nine years ago, a $295 million winning ticket was sold at a Speedway gas station in the town....

CONOVER, N.C. — A store clerk's slip-up at the cash register has paid off big time. Wadburn Allen on Tuesday accidentally rang up two duplicate Powerball tickets for a customer in this western North Carolina town. At the end of the day, after she was unable to sell the second ticket, Allen paid for it herself. The next day, Allen returned to the store and found the ticket matched all five numbers — earning her a $200,000 jackpot. When Allen went to Raleigh to claim her prize, she met the customer who purchased the original ticket. The customer also will...

Whittaker bought and decorated an elaborate home for Bragg and her mother that included a perfect recreation of the bottle from the 1960's TV sitcom "I Dream of Jeannie." He also gave Brandi about $2,000 a week and bought her four new cars. Whittaker said while Bragg was only 17 years old at the time, she was very responsible with her money. "To a young kid cars mean a lot," Whittaker said. "She had four cars and I'm very proud that she had four cars."

On Christmas morning in 2002, Jack Whittaker woke up to perhaps the biggest gift imaginable. Whittaker had won the Powerball lottery jackpot -- a whopping $315 million. "I got sick at my stomach, and I just was [at] a loss for words and advice," Whittaker said. "You know, I was really searching for advice, and it's, like, Christmas Day." It was a made-for-TV Christmas story, and Whittaker's hardworking family became celebrities overnight. Whittaker's wife, Jewel, and their granddaughter Brandi Bragg would appear on no fewer than eight television shows. But as Whittaker celebrated his good fortune, he had no way...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) -- A man beset by problems since winning a record lottery jackpot says he can't pay a settlement to a casino worker because thieves cleaned out his bank accounts. Powerball winner Jack Whittaker gave that explanation in a note last fall to a lawyer for Kitti French, who accused him of assaulting her at the Tri-State Racetrack and Gaming Center, a slots-only casino near Charleston, according to a motion French's lawyer filed this week demanding payment of the confidential settlement. Whittaker won a nearly $315 million on Christmas 2002, then the largest undivided lottery prize in U.S....

ATTENTION: $200,000 Powerball Ticket to Expire on December 28th A Powerball ticket worth $200,000 will expire soon unless someone comes forward to claim the prize. The ticket, sold in Spearfish, South Dakota, matched all five white balls, but not the red Powerball, in the July 1, 2006 drawing. Thursday, December 28, 2006 is the last day to claim the prize at any of the three South Dakota Lottery offices in Rapid City, Pierre or Sioux Falls. Lotto prizes in South Dakota must be claimed within 180 days of the drawing. If the prize goes unclaimed, state law requires the money...

(CBS/AP) About 100 cheese-factory workers in the Wisconsin town of Saint Cloud have been celebrating — because they say they're $208 million richer. Wisconsin state lottery officials say no one has officially stepped forward to claim Saturday's Powerball jackpot. But a large contingent of employees from Sargento Cheese say they have the winning ticket locked in a safe. Eric Heimermann is one member of the celebrating group. He told the Fond du Lac Reporter that the mostly second shift workers had chipped in $1 apiece to a pool to purchase lottery tickets. Heimermann, 24, of St. Cloud, spoke with the...

North Carolina's lottery ticket buyers have a bigger prize to aim that, starting today -- a $38 million jackpot. The Tar Heel State began selling tickets this morning for the Powerball lottery drawing, which takes place every Wednesday and Saturday night and involves lotteries from 29 states, including South Carolina. The Powerball jackpot grows if nobody has a winning ticket. North Carolina began selling scratch-off lottery tickets in March, but today was the first day for Powerball ticket sales.

  $853,492 Powerball Tickets to Expire! Two Powerball tickets worth an incredible $853,492 each will expire soon if the winners do not step forward. One ticket was purchased on October 19, 2005 at Hebron BP, 2144 Kilgore Place, Hebron, Kentucky. The other missing ticket was purchased in Littleton, Colorado. Both tickets were purchased for the October 19, 2005 Powerball drawing worth $340 million. The winners of the missing tickets matched the first five white ball numbers to win Powerball’s second tier prize of $200,000. The tickets also shared in the Match 5 Bonus prize pool, winning an additional $653,492...

LINCOLN, Neb. - Eight workers at a Nebraska meat processing plant claimed the record $365 million Powerball jackpot Wednesday, giving each about $15.5 million after taxes. The seven men and one woman all work at a ConAgra ham processing plant near the U-Stop convenience store where they bought the winning ticket last week for Saturday’s lottery. They ended up with the biggest jackpot in U.S. lottery history.

LINCOLN, Nebraska (AP) -- The winner -- or winners -- of the biggest jackpot on record for any lottery in the United States won't be a secret much longer. Nebraska Lottery officials planned to reveal who won the $365 million Powerball jackpot at a news conference Wednesday. The winning numbers drawn Saturday were 15, 17, 43, 44 and 48, with a Powerball number of 29, according to the Multi-State Lottery Association of Des Moines, Iowa, which runs the game for the participating states. The only ticket matching the winning numbers was sold at a a U-Stop convenience store in Lincoln,...

POWERBALL, Feb. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- The record breaking $365 Million Powerball jackpot was won on a single ticket sold in Nebraska. The winner will now have to decide between the 29-year, 30-payment annuity, and the cash option worth $177.3 million. The winner will have 60 days after their ticket is validated to make that decision. ADVERTISEMENT The numbers drawn Saturday night were 15 - 17 - 43 - 44 - 48 and the Powerball was 29. The Power Play multiplier was 4. The Match 5 BONUS feature kicked in for this drawing, allowing an additional $19.6 million in cash to...

NEWPORT, Ky. (AP) -- A woman who won a $65.4 million Powerball jackpot with her husband five years ago was found dead at her home overlooking the Ohio River, where she had apparently been for days before anyone found her, police said. Virginia Metcalf Merida's son discovered her body Wednesday. Police were awaiting autopsy and toxicology results before announcing a cause of death. When the woman and her husband, Mack Wayne Metcalf, won the jackpot, they told lottery officials they were going their separate ways to fulfill their dreams. Merida planned to quit her job making corrugated boxes and buy...

Oregon Foursome Claims $340M in Lottery Wednesday November 9, 2005 2:46 AM By BRAD CAIN Associated Press Writer SALEM, Ore. (AP) - A family that parlayed $40 worth of tickets into the second-biggest jackpot in U.S. lottery history came forward Tuesday to claim their $340 million prize. ``I'm still in disbelief that we won the big one,'' said Frances Chaney, 68, who went in on the Powerball ticket with her 72-year-old husband Bob, their daughter and daughter's husband. The Powerball numbers were drawn on Oct. 19, but the four waited to claim their winnings at Oregon Lottery headquarters until they...

I have just learned that Oklahoma, which recently started a lottery, will be joining Powerball in January 2006. Am I excited? Well yes and no. I am excited at the prospect of having the chance of winning millions in Powerball, but I am not so excited that my sense of reality is skewed. Nevertheless, the chance does exist. So to prepare I Googled the term "lottery winner financial advisor" and got the site http://www.note.com/note/pp/jackpot.html. Very common sense information on how to prepare for winning a major lottery prize, and stay grounded in the fact that your chances of winning are...

Someone won last night's $340 million Powerball jackpot. After 20 straight drawings, the winning ticket was sold in Oregon. It was the largest jackpot in the game's history and the second biggest jackpot in U-S history. The winning numbers are 7 - 21 - 43 - 44 - 49 and the Powerball is 29. The odds of hitting the jackpot were one in 146-million. By the way, all the people who played the numbers from the T-V show "Lost", lost.

DID ANYONE WIN?

The powerball lottery next Wednesday will be for $340 million. Thats more than 1/4 of a billion (with a B). The cash option is 164.4 million, which means that the winner, AFTER TAXES, clears approximately $100 million. Now my question is: what would you do with $100 million?

$93.4M Winner Comes Forward! (powerball lottery goes to an AF Sgt.)   John San Cartier August 10, 2005New Mexico Albuquerque, NM – A master sergeant assigned to the 58th Training Squadron at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque has claimed a $93.4 million Powerball jackpot. John San Cartier correctly matched all six numbers drawn on August 10. It was the New Mexico Lottery's third Powerball jackpot, the second-largest prize in the state, and the largest claimed by an individual. The winning numbers were 13-31-36-38-49 and the Powerball was 2. San Cartier chose the $52.2 million lump-sum option. After federal withholding taxes...

Apart from superb handling and snazzy styling, the low-slung F430 goes from zero to 60 in under four seconds. The wait comes if you want to buy The Ferrari F430 is definitely a guy thing. It's a ground-hugging, immensely powerful rear-engine two-seater heavily influenced by Formula 1 racing, which Ferrari has dominated over the last five years. Ferrari figures 98% of the buyers are men -- and not just any men, either. The typical Ferrari buyer earns more than $1 million annually, which is not surprising as the car sells for $180,785. Most owners have at least one other Ferrari...

<p>DES MOINES, Iowa -- A ticket bought in Idaho matched all five numbers and the Powerball to win the $220.3 million multistate drawing Saturday night, lottery officials said. If the winner opts for a lump sum check, it will be written for just over $125 million dollars.</p>

Monday, May 2, 2005 11:45 am Xxxxx Jackpot Winner Associated Press ©Copyright 2005 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. E-mail this story DES MOINES, Iowa — Xxxx of the tickets sold for the Powerball game Xxxxxxday night matched all six numbers drawn, which were: XX-XX-XX-XX-XX Powerball XX (number, number, number, number, number, Powerball number) Power Play: X Players matching all five numbers and the Powerball would have won or shared the $XX.X million jackpot. The prize goes to an estimated $XX.X million for Xxxxxxday. Tickets that match the first five numbers,...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - The businessman who won the nation's richest undivided lottery jackpot was sued Friday by the family of a teenager who died of a drug overdose at his home in September. The wrongful death lawsuit said Jesse Joe Tribble was led astray by Jack Whittaker's late granddaughter, and it said he should have exercised more control over her since she was in his custody. Tribble, 18, was found dead Sept. 17 at Whittaker's home in Scott Depot. The night before, according to the lawsuit, Tribble had used drugs at the home with 17-year-old Brandi Bragg. When Tribble...

HINTON, W.Va. (AP) - The nation's largest lottery winner blamed his granddaughter's recent death on a drug overdose and said he wants the friends he says gave the drugs to her to be put in jail. Jack Whittaker's comments came as a medical examiner was preparing a toxicology report on Brandi Bragg, 17, whose body was found earlier this week wrapped in a plastic tarp on property owned by a boyfriend's father. "All of the problems I have had are because of my granddaughter's friends, her drug-using friends," Whittaker said. "I'm going to find them and put them in jail....

Story Photo FIRST ON 13 NEWS: Powerball Millionaire Faces 2nd DUI Charge This Year; Also Accused of Carrying a Weapon Without a License Record Powerball jackpot winner Jack Whittaker spent Tuesday night in jail after being charged with driving under the influence of alcohol and carrying a dangerous weapon without a license. 13 News was the first to report the latest arrest of the 57-year-old Scott Depot man. Whittaker also was charged with failure to maintain control of his vehicle and failure to submit to a Breathalyzer test after he wrecked his Hummer on the West Virginia Turnpike. The accident...

33 Co-Workers from Seaford Delaware $214.7 MILLION POWERBALL JACKPOT CLAIMED BY GROUP OF CO-WORKERS FROM SEAFORD, DELAWAREDover, October 12, 2004—A group of 33 employees who work for a printing company in Seaford, Delaware today presented the winning ticket for the Saturday, October 9th POWERBALL® drawing and claimed the $214.7 million jackpot. The winning employees have opted to remain anonymous and have selected the cash single payment value for the jackpot, which totals $116.9 million before federal withholding taxes. Each of the 33 winners will receive a payment of $2,657,754, which represents their share of the jackpot after federal taxes. The...

Another Twin Cities couple became millionaires this afternoon when they accepted a $53.1 million check from the state lottery.

Jack Whittaker was robbed, again Robbed again! Jack Whittaker, the Powerball winner, is out another $85,000, a Rolex watch and an ostrich skin jacket. Police say someone stole a car from a Teays Valley Auto Shop, then drove it to Whittaker's home. The person or persons took $85,000 out of his car. Witnesses say the robbers dumped the stolen car near the Foodland in Teays Valley.

After icy weather near Nitro forced Powerball multimillionaire Jack Whittaker off the road, the State Police say they found him drunk and slumped over the steering wheel of his dark green Cadillac. Whittaker, who hit the $314.9 million Powerball jackpot on Christmas 2002, was charged Sunday with drunken driving. Whittaker said he was on his way to Tri-State Racetrack and Gaming Center when he pulled off Interstate 64 near Nitro because ice was covering the roads. “I’m nowhere near intoxicated,” Whittaker told WSAZ NewsChannel 3 Sunday as police escorted him into Kanawha County Magistrate Court. But State Police Trooper B.R....

$210 Million Powerball Jackpot up for Grabs on New Year's EveSunday December 28, 12:56 am ET POWERBALL, Dec. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Lottery players across the nation will have more than 200 million reasons to celebrate New Year's Eve this year. That's because no one correctly matched all six numbers in Saturday's Powerball drawing, pushing the jackpot to an estimated $210 million. That's currently the largest lottery jackpot in the world. The $210 million jackpot would rank as the 5th largest Powerball jackpot ever, and would rank as the 7th largest lottery jackpot all-time. The cash option for the Wednesday, December...

EAST MONTPELIER, Vt. - Denise and James Webster were going fishing when they took a detour to test their luck first elsewhere: buying their first Powerball lottery ticket in Vermont. The couple, along with hundreds of thousands of people in 25 states and territories where the game is played, have been lured by a jackpot that stood at $250 million Tuesday and could climb higher by Wednesday evening's drawing. "Everybody's got a chance to win," James Webster said. "Now we're gonna try our luck at fishing." To many Vermonters, the high stakes game is entirely new and the jackpot —...

<p>Last week's record Powerball prize generated a windfall of publicity for that multi-state lottery. Several cable news channels gave live coverage to the press conference announcing that one lucky ticket buyer had won a nine-figure jackpot, and in subsequent days the national media dedicated extensive coverage to the story.</p>

W.Va. Pastors Mull Over Powerball Funds Three West Virginia Pastors Prepare for Possible Windfall From Powerball Winner's Fortune CHARLESTON, W.Va. Dec. 28 — One of the Church of God's basic tenets is the tithe the donation of 10 percent of one's earnings to the parish. In Summers County, where the median income is $21,147, that doesn't necessarily add up to big bucks. Ten percent of $170 million, though that's another story. On Saturday, two days after Powerball mega-jackpot winner Andrew "Jack" Whittaker announced plans to donate $17 million to three pastors, two of the likely recipients said they're excited, and...

Click here for printable version of storyE-mail this article to a friend Record highWest Virginia contractor wins largest single lottery jackpotThursday December 26, 2002 By Gavin McCormickThe Associated Press A 55-year-old West Virginia water and sewer contractor has won the $314.9 million Powerball jackpot, the largest single lottery jackpot in history.Andrew Jackson Whittaker Jr. received a $10 million advance check from Gov. Bob Wise Thursday at a news conference. The balance of Whittaker's $314.9 million won't be presented for another two weeks.Whittaker said he originally thought he had lost the jackpot because the numbers came up wrong on the televised...

One Ticket Wins $315 Million Lottery 24 minutes ago LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Somewhere in West Virginia, someone is about to celebrate a green Christmas. One winning ticket was sold in West Virginia for the nearly-$315 million Powerball lottery on Wednesday night, a spokesman for contest operator the Multi-State Lottery Association said. The winning numbers were 5, 14, 16, 29 and 53 and the "Powerball" was 7. The jackpot was the largest ever taken by a single winner, association spokesman Joe Mahony told Reuters. The Powerball is played in 23 states plus Washington D.C. and the Virgin Islands. Initially expected...

 Powerball Jackpot Jumps to $314.9 MillionBy MIRANDA LEITSINGERASSOCIATED PRESS WRITERDES MOINES, Iowa -- An unexpected Christmas Day run on Powerball tickets pushed the already whopping $280 million jackpot to $314.9 million just before numbers were drawn, making it the multistate lottery's largest prize ever.The numbers drawn were 5-14-16-29-53 and the Powerball was 7. The prize would be the third-largest lottery jackpot in U.S. history.Whether any winning tickets were sold will not be announced until Thursday, said Joe Mahoney, a spokesman for the Multi-State Lottery Association.He said the jackpot grew after holiday sales were much higher than expected."We were always planning...

<p>5-22-34-39-52 ... and 30, the powerball.</p> <p>That was the first thing -- and perhaps the only thing -- on the minds of many Powerball lottery players in the wake of Saturday night's drawing for an estimated $216.3 million prize.</p> <p>But early this morning, officials of the multi-state agency that runs Powerball said there was no winner of the jackpot, pushing the prize for the next drawing -- on Christmas night -- to an estimated $280 million.</p>

'Powerball' incentive pondered for faltering Lotto 07/24/2002 By GEORGE KUEMPEL / The Dallas Morning News AUSTIN - Lotto ticket sales are down and probably will remain flat unless changes are made, the Texas Lottery Commission was told Tuesday. Sales for the last 47 weeks were off 16.55 percent, while sales for all games combined were up nearly 4 percent, thanks largely to an 11.8 percent hike in instant ticket sales. Officials with Gtech Corp., the lottery operator, said revising the lotto game and adding a Powerball-like element would boost yearly sales by $168 million, to $733 million, by creating...