News: Long Island Powerball Lotto Winners
(Long Island, N.Y.) The drawings were announced last week in a $201.9 million jackpot for a Quick-Pick ticket from the Powerball lottery. The only winning ticket belonged to a group of twenty workers at the Melville Costco on Route 110. The ticket was sold from a stationery store in Lindenhurst called Maulik & Chandi.
The workers participated in a pool and bought an estimated ten dollars worth of tickets on a regular basis. The winning ticket was purchased by a retired resident who worked at Costco part-time. A news conference was scheduled at the Costco store, but had been cancelled when not all of the winning employees could attend.
The winning ticket consisted of five numbers and a Powerball, and will afford each of the employees roughly six million dollars before taxes. Reports stated that the winners would likely be announced together along with the date and time the ticket was sold. The winners were mostly cashiers and front-end employees.
Some of the twenty scheduled to work began their shifts not knowing about the fortune, and at least one employee allegedly quit on the spot. A co-worker claimed that some of the winners have decided to continue working. Sources stated that a lot of the employees were absent from Costco following the announcement.
The $201.9 million jackpot is the second largest jackpot of the year, falling behind the $221.7 million jackpot that occurred in earlier months. The Costco employees’ jackpot had been growing since April after a man visiting his mother in Indiana purchased a $74 million winning ticket. The Powerball jackpots start at twenty million, topping the jackpots of their Mega Millions competitors that start at fifteen.
Reports stated that Powerball jackpots are announced every Wednesday and Saturday night and Mega Millions are drawn on Friday. The store that sold the winning ticket will receive ten thousand dollars and the reputation for luck. Two other lotto winners came from tickets purchased at Maulik & Chandi, which was named after the owners’ son and niece.
Their store is located in the Village Seaport Plaza and they were informed by the New York lottery that they had sold the winning ticket. They have been selling lotto tickets since they began operating eleven years ago, and their customers consist mostly of regulars and local residents. The odds of winning the Costco employees’ jackpot were calculated at one in 195 million.
In September of 2006 a local resident won a scratch off for a Red Hot Million game that afforded him a million dollars. In a separate winning, a customer of Maulik & Chandi won ninety-thousand dollars. Visitors of the shopping center spot the store by the huge sign that can be seen from the adjacent Montauk Highway. The sign informs viewers of the location where the 200-million-dollar jackpot was sold, giving them hope and encouragement to purchase the next winning ticket.
