A Plaid Pantry on Columbia Boulevard in Northeast Portland sold the winning $1.3 billion Powerball ticket, Oregon Lottery officials confirmed Monday.
The winning sale entitles the Cully neighborhood convenience store to a $100,000 bonus. A manager at the store who identified herself as Rhonda Miranda said she couldn’t comment on the sale.
The name of the person who bought the ticket has not been revealed, but lottery officials said the person came forward on Monday. The person’s name will be made public after a vetting process, officials said.
“This is an unprecedented jackpot win for Oregon Lottery,” said Mike Wells, lottery director, in a press release Monday. “We’re taking every precaution to verify the winner before awarding the prize money, which will take time.”
The winner is looking at a $1.326 billion jackpot. Before the drawing, it was estimated at $1.3 billion, but ticket sales drove it higher.
The jackpot has a cash value of $621 million if the winner chooses to take a lump sum rather than an annuity paid over 30 years. The prize is subject to federal taxes and state taxes in Oregon.
The $1.326 billion prize ranks as the fourth largest Powerball jackpot and the eighth largest in U.S. lottery history. As the prizes grow, the drawings attract more ticket sales and the jackpots subsequently become harder to hit. If you bought a $2 ticket for the weekend drawing, your odds of winning were 1 in 292.2 million.
Until the latest drawing, no one had won Powerball’s top prize since New Year’s Day, amounting to 41 consecutive drawings without a jackpot winner, tying a streak set twice before in 2022 and 2021.
Plaid Pantry has 104 stores in Oregon, one of which sold a $3.3 million Megabucks jackpot last summer.
For more than 24 hours, the source of the winning ticket was a mystery to the public. Oregon Lottery officials said Sunday only that the business was in the 97218 ZIP code, home to 13 businesses that sell Powerball tickets.
On Monday, many of those business owners and their customers were buzzing with excitement and hope that one of their customers was the lucky winner. That person’s identity is — for now — a new mystery.
— Beth Slovic is a deputy editor on the public safety and breaking news team. Reach her at 503-221-8551 or bslovic@oregonian.com. Journalists Mims Copeland, Gosia Wozniacka and Austin De Dios contributed reporting.
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