Christmas came early for someone who purchased a Powerball ticket at a gas station outside Little Rock, Arkansas, worth more than $1.8 billion.
The lone winner in Wednesday's Christmas Eve drawing matched all five winning numbers and the Powerball to capture the second-largest lottery jackpot in U.S. history, ending the game's three-month stretch without a top prize winner.
Here are some things to know about the Powerball jackpot and what happens next.
The winning ticket was sold at a Murphy USA gas station in Cabot, a suburb northeast of Little Rock with a population of about 27,000 people. A telephone message left at the store on Friday was not returned, but a spokesperson for the company, Alejandra Barron, said in an email their stores were particularly busy on Christmas Eve with shoppers purchasing Powerball tickets.
It is the second time a major jackpot was won at a Murphy USA store. Last year, an $800 million winning Mega Millions multi-state lottery ticket was sold at a Murphy Express in Sugar Land, Texas, Barron said.
The entire community of Cabot is buzzing about who the potential winner might be, said the city's Mayor Ken Kincade.
“It's all over Facebook, Twitter,” Kincade said. “Everyone's talking about it and wants to know who it is.”
Because the gas station is located near a major interstate, Kincade said it's also possible the lottery winner was from out of town.
“I hope it's a citizen from Cabot, of course,” Kincade said. “That would be wonderful.”
In Arkansas, lottery winners have 180 days, or about 6 months, to claim their prize, said Karen Reynolds, a spokesperson for the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery.
Under Arkansas law, lottery winners of prizes of more than $500,000 can request that their identity remains confidential for up to three years, after which the information is no longer exempt from disclosure. However, if the winner is an elected official or a close relative, those records remain confidential for only 6 months.
Lottery proceeds are subject state individual income tax in Arkansas, where the top rate is 3.9%. If the winner selects the lump sum cash payment option of $834.9 million, they would owe the state of Arkansas more than $32 million.
Arkansas law also authorizes overdue taxes, delinquent child support and any other judgments or liens to be withheld from lottery winnings if that person has such outstanding debts.
The winning numbers were 04, 25, 31, 52 and 59, with the Powerball number being 19.
The last time someone won a Powerball jackpot on Christmas Eve was in 2011, Powerball said. The company added that the sweepstakes has been won on Christmas Day four times, most recently in 2013.
Powerball’s odds of 1 in 292.2 million are designed to generate big jackpots, with prizes growing as they roll over when no one wins.
Lottery officials made the odds tougher in 2015 to create those humongous jackpots, although officials note the odds are far better for the game’s many smaller prizes.
Tickets cost $2, and the game is offered in 45 states plus Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
