CA Lottery Reveals Edwin Castro as $2.04bn Powerball Winner

The jackpot, which is the largest lottery jackpot in the history of the US, was hit with just one winning ticket that was sold to Edwin Castro in Los Angeles County, an unincorporated community in the foothills northeast of the city of Los Angeles. The ticket with winning numbers 10, 33, 41, 47 and 56, and 10 as the red Powerball number, was sold at Joe’s Service Center in Altadena right on time for the big drawing that took place in November. 

Lucky Draw of a Long Rolling Sequence 

Millions of other lottery players tried their luck at the mouth-watering multibillion-dollar jackpot that had eluded players for several months prior to Castro finally hitting it on its 41st draw of the same rolling sequence. 

The Powerball jackpot is initiated at a value of $20 million and grows in size every time no one manages to win it. Over 11.2 million tickets won cash prizes during the same drawing held on November 7, 2022 drawing, including two additional big winning tickets in California which each matched five numbers and have prizes worth more than $1 million each.

Similar to other jackpot winners, the player who denied giving any interviews and making any public appearances was presented with two choices: to receive the entirety of his winnings in the form of a lump sum or to opt for 30 annual payments. 

Castro, who is an ex-student of the California public school system, opted for the cash value of the jackpot, which represented a grand total of $997.6 million. The center that is owned by Joe Chahayed also earned $1 million in bonus money for selling the winning ticket to the player. This happened because California Lottery winners do not have to necessarily be residents of the state in order to be granted a win. 

“Shocked and Ecstatic”

California laws require jackpot winners to be part of public records. However, any other personal information including age and address is not to be disclosed to the public. 

Not wishing to be in the spotlight, the big winner sent a written statement to the California Lottery, saying that he felt “shocked and ecstatic to have won the Powerball drawing,” while calling the California public school system the true winner. This is because the California Lottery is known to generously fund the public schools and colleges in the state. 

Reminiscing about his own studies completed at a public school in California, Castro called it “gratifying” to learn about the perks that the California school system will be benefiting from as a result of his own good fortune. The self-supporting state agency anticipates the state’s auditing process will conclude that the lottery delivered public schools in the state a record amount of $2 billion in the fiscal year 2021- 2022. 

The lottery also contributed $1 billion to support public schools on a yearly basis over the course of the past 22 years.

In January, a Powerball lottery ticket sold in Washington brought its lucky player a $754.6m jackpot.