Staten Island Plumber Finds Ticket Worth $136 Million in Basement

A player who snapped up the second largest Powerball prize ever awarded in New York has admitted that he only found out about his success after his truck broke down. Anthony Perosi, a plumber from Staten Island, needed money for car parts and went to check the basement pipe where he tended to pin tickets he recently bought. He discovered that one ticket was worth $136 million and had been forgotten about for six weeks.

The ticket had been bought for the draw on 14th March and a friend had reportedly told Perosi that somebody else had won. Upon finding out that he had landed the staggering windfall, Perosi was in a state of shock.

“I was looking at the ticket, looking at the computer, looking at the ticket, looking at the computer,” he said at a press conference after coming forward to claim his prize. “I tried to breathe in, and nothing would go in, so I thought I was having a heart attack, like my heart stopped.”

Perosi, 56, plans to share his prize with his family and is looking forward to spending more time with his them in addition travelling around New York. He intends to carry on working but admits he will cut his hours back and ‘do some investing for the future of my nieces and nephews and my grandchildren, hopefully.’

The story of Perosi’s good fortune came out just after last Wednesday’s Powerball draw, when one ticket holder from Arizona grabbed the jackpot of $188.9 million. Following a rollover on Saturday, players will be keeping a close eye on their tickets ahead of the next draw in midweek, when the top prize will be $50 million. Tickets can also be bought online to take away the worry of having to keep them safe, providing participants with added security as they play for life-changing amounts of cash.

Three Ticket Holders Split Massive Powerball Jackpot

A mind-blowing Powerball jackpot worth $564.1 million has been won by three ticket holders from North Carolina, Puerto Rico and Texas. The top prize for one of America’s biggest lottery games had been rolling over since Saturday 29th November 2014, and when its value surpassed $450 million last Saturday, ticket sales exploded. The jackpot was re-valued at $485 million on Tuesday, $500 million during the day on Wednesday and finally hit $564.1 million on Wednesday evening.

According to Powerball officials, there were 125 million tickets purchased for the big game on the day of the draw alone, which enabled them to push the jackpot up to its final value. State lottery officials were telling a similar story, as ticket sales in some areas averaged out to thousands per minute. Players across the United States were grabbing entries, starting syndicates and dreaming big.

The prize is the third largest ever for Powerball and the fifth largest in U.S. lottery history. The Puerto Rican ticket holder is the first player outside of the continental U.S. to win a Powerball grand prize. All that is currently known about the winning ticket from Texas is that it was sold at the Appletree Food Mart in Princeton, Texas. Information about the winner from North Carolina is not currently available.

There were 5,971,080 prize winners created last night as lucky participants matched some – or all – of the winning line, which was 11, 13, 25, 39 and 54 with Powerball 19 and Power Play 3. The Match 5 prize tier saw an amazing 33 players win $1 million each, with another player in Pennsylvania clinching $2 million for matching five main numbers with Power Play. Visit the Powerball Results page of Lottery.net to learn more about this amazing draw.

As it stands, each of the three grand prize winners would receive $188 million before taxes if they choose annuity payments. If they receive their prize as a lump sum, they would receive approximately $127 million before taxes. No matter what, that’s more than enough to buy a mansion, a fleet of sports cars and a holiday home on some sunny Caribbean island!

Saturday’s Powerball jackpot will be worth $40 million, with a cash option of $27 million.