WASHINGTON – Friday the 13th didn’t produce a jackpot winner in the Mega Millions drawing, so the estimated jackpot of $425 million keeps swelling to a new estimate that tops half a billion dollars for Tuesday’s drawing.
The game has now rolled over 21 times without a winner. The numbers drawn Friday are: 19-24-26-27-70, Mega Ball: 12.
The jackpot is the second-largest Mega Millions jackpot ever, trailing a $656 million jackpot in March 2012, and it is the fifth-largest lottery jackpot in U.S. history.
UPDATED: 2:20 a.m.
Mega Million ticket holders are hoping that Friday the 13th is anything but unlucky as they vie for one of the lottery’s highest payouts ever.
The jackpot for the Friday, Dec. 13 drawing is an estimated $400 million — the second-largest jackpot in Mega Million history and the fifth-largest ever in North America, according to Mega Millions.
On Thursday, customers were rushing to buy their lottery tickets.
Pat Mitchell from Northwest says she doesn’t buy them often but was “hoping for a big one for the holidays.”
Buddy Roogow, executive director for the D.C. Lottery and Charitable Games Control Board, says, “People seem to get excited when you get to the triple digits and therefore (the jackpot) starts rising quickly.”
The jackpot has grown over the last two months after Mega Million has “rolled” 20 times without a winner.
“If we don’t have a winner on Friday night at the jackpot level we may be well over $500 million for the next drawing.”
The jackpot on Friday could reach as high as $425 million depending on ticket sales, lottery officials told USA TODAY.
If one ticket matches all six numbers for the $400 jackpot, the winner will have the choice of receiving the full jackpot in 30 annual payments, or a cash option of approximately $216.4 million before taxes.
The odds of winning are 1 in 259 million, but that hasn’t slowed people down. There are burgeoning ticket sales ahead of Friday’s 11 p.m. drawing, USA TODAY reports.
The odds of winning any of the Mega Millions prizes are approximately 1 in 15.
Mega Millions holds the record for the largest jackpot ever, at $656 million. That jackpot on March 30, 2012, was split by three winning tickets in Maryland, Illinois and Kansas.
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