North Carolina Player Wins $344 Million Powerball Jackpot

The numbers drawn on Saturday June 1st were 6, 15, 34, 45 and 52, with a Powerball of 8. It was quickly announced that one ticket had matched the full winning line, and that it had been sold at Carlie C’s IGA at 3501 North Main Street in Hope Mills.

The retailer will also receive a $50,000 bonus for selling the winning ticket after Jackson made his way to the North Carolina Education Lottery's headquarters in Raleigh on Tuesday night to collect his prize.

Winner's Plans For The Future

Jackson, who is 66 and retired, told lottery officials that he had not checked the numbers until Tuesday morning, and even then he did not realize straight away that he had won the jackpot. Speaking about a phone call he made to his wife after finally looking at his ticket, he recalled: “I said I think I won at least 50,000. After I hung up the phone with her, I got back in there and looked and said, ‘Dang, I got ‘em all’.”

He admitted that the news still hadn’t ‘completely washed over him’ yet when he came forward to claim his prize, but he was adamant that his win would not change him. He said: “I’m still going to wear jeans. Maybe newer ones.”

Jackson doesn’t know how he will spend most of the money, but he plans to donate to three charities – St. Jude’s Children’s Research, Shriners Hospital for Children and the Wounded Warrior Project. He also hopes to visit Vietnam, where his wife is from.

Speaking about how he had chosen his numbers, Jackson revealed that they had come from a fortune cookie that his stepdaughter had got a couple of years ago when she was six. He had used the same five numbers on Powerball and Mega Millions every week since, mixing up the sixth number from time to time. “I never expected to win. I just got lucky,” he said.

The $344 million jackpot is the largest prize ever paid out to a North Carolina player. Jackson opted to take the lump sum payment of $223 million, which will end up as a $158 million payout once federal and state taxes have been paid out. 

Big Winners

The previous North Carolina record had belonged to Marie Holmes from Shallotte, who matched all the numbers in the $564 million drawing on February 11th 2015. However, there were also two other winning tickets on that occasion so her share was $188 million.

It took 18 drawings without a winner to create Saturday’s jackpot, but it still did not rank as one of the ten largest of all time. The most recent win, worth $768 million on March 27th, was the second-biggest in Powerball history. Manuel Franco, from New Berlin in Wisconsin, came forward less than a month later, saying he would be taking the cash option of $477 million and wanted to ‘help out the world’.

The Powerball record, and the record for any lottery anywhere in the world, remains the $1.58 billion that was split between three winners back in January 2016. The tickets were sold in California, Florida and Tennessee.

The jackpot will now go back to $40 million for the next drawing on Wednesday evening. Even if it doesn’t get won again straight away, there are sure to be lots of other exciting payouts in the other prize categories. You can go to the Powerball Numbers page after every draw to see the results and find out if you are a winner!