$1B Mega Millions Jackpot Lures Southlanders

LOS ANGELES — The lure of a $1 billion jackpot has Southlanders flocking to the market for Mega Millions lottery tickets and a chance at the second-largest jackpot in U.S. history.

The only number more staggering than the estimated jackpot is the odds of winning: less than 1 in 302,575,350.

Though the odds are slim, it's been done before in Los Angeles County. A winning ticket for the largest jackpot ever — $1.59 billion in January 2016 — was purchased at a 7-Eleven in Chino Hills. But that doesn't mean the odds of winning in Chino Hills are any better than anywhere else.

Buying tickets at a store where winning tickets have been sold in the past will not increase a purchaser's chance of winning a jackpot, according to University of Southern California mathematics Professor Ken Alexander.

"The chance that a given place will sell a winning lottery ticket is just related to how many tickets they sell," Alexander said.

Los Angeles is also home to one of the unluckiest lottery players ever: the sad soul who won a $63 million jackpot in Chatsworth in 2015 but failed to come forward in time to collect his or her winnings. Winners have just 180 days to collect the prize.

The jackpot winner with the saddest story may be a Ventura County security guard who blew through his $19 million jackpot and turned to robbing banks across Southern California to maintain his easy-money lifestyle.

SEE ALSO:

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• Meet The Valley Man Who Keeps Winning The Lottery
• Excuse Me, Did You Leave $63 Million on the Table in Chatsworth?
• How A Lottery Jackpot Winner Became A Bank Robber
• 'It's The Lottery Curse,' Says Jackpot Winner Turned Bank Robber

The latest jackpot grew large because no tickets matching all six numbers have been sold for 36 consecutive drawings, the longest streak without a jackpot winner in the game's history. Sept. 15 was the last time a Mega Millions jackpot was won. (One ticket with five of six winning numbers was sold in Artesia this week, netting the lucky winner more than $1 million.)

The only larger jackpots were a $1.59 billion Powerball jackpot on Jan. 13, 2016, and a $1.54 billion Mega Millions jackpot on Oct. 23, 2018. Since the game began in 2002, there have been 192 jackpots won by 217 individual tickets. There have been 20 jackpots shared by two or more winning tickets.

If a ticket with all six numbers is sold, the winner will have the option of receiving the $1 billion jackpot in 30 annual payments — with each payment 5 percent larger than the previous one — or as a single lump-sum payment equal to all the cash in the Mega Millions jackpot prize pool, which is $716.3 million for Friday's drawing.

The overall chance of winning any prize is 1 in 24. Ticket sales close at 7:45 p.m. The drawing is scheduled to be held at 8 p.m.

City News Service contributed to this report.