Winning $344 Million Mega Millions Jackpot Ticket Sold In Illinois

The Mega Millions jackpot — all $344 million of it (estimated) — was won Tuesday night, as a ticket-buyer in Illinois matched all five white balls and the gold Mega Ball to take home the prize.

The numbers were 1, 5, 17, 39, 62 and the gold Mega Ball of 8, and the jackpot has a lump-sum cash value, should the winner choose to go that route, of $159.1 million.

The winning ticket was sold at Casey’s General Store in Cortland, according to a press release issued by Mega Millions. This marks the second Mega Millions jackpot awarded this year, with the first won in Arizona on Jan. 17.

Lottery Geeks estimates some 14.9 million $2 tickets were sold for the drawing, which was the fourth-to-last drawing at that price point. Mega Millions tickets will be $5 each come the April 8 drawing.

In addition to the jackpot winner in Illinois, one lottery player in Florida matched all five white balls Tuesday to win $1 million.

Lucky 16

This marked the 16th time a Mega Millions jackpot-winning ticket was sold in Illinois. The Prairie State’s lucky streak began with the game’s first two jackpot winners in May 2002, while the most recent win occurred on June 4, 2024.

The 19-drawing run between jackpots that just concluded produced more than 8.8 million winning tickets across all prize tiers. Among these were 16 non-jackpot prizes of $1 million or more, scattered across 13 states.

Tuesday’s drawing generated 619,889 winning tickets beyond the jackpot winner, and in addition to the Florida million-dollar ticket, another 18 tickets nationwide matched four white balls plus the Mega Ball for third-tier prizes — and seven of those are worth $20,000 each thanks to the 2X Megaplier option, while the remaining 11 claimed the standard $10,000.

The jackpot will reset to $20 million (cash value: $9.2 million) for the upcoming drawing on Friday.

Mega Millions stands alone as the lottery game that has produced seven billion-dollar-plus jackpots — each in a different state. South Carolina claimed the first in 2018, with Michigan following in 2021, and Illinois in 2022. Maine and Florida continued the trend in 2023, with New Jersey joining the club last March and California rounding out the group in December. The Florida prize won on August 8, 2023, remains the game’s largest jackpot at $1.602 billion.

Drawings take place at 11 p.m. ET on Tuesdays and Fridays. While the overall odds of winning any Mega Millions prize are 1 in 24, the odds of hitting the jackpot stand at 1 in 302,575,350.