Wanted: Winner of $20m lottery ticket
If your pocket or wallet seems hot, check it quickly. It just might be burning from that Super Lotto Plus ticket — now worth $20 million — that you bought at a San Jose 7-Eleven.
California Lottery officials reported that the winning Lotto ticket picked Saturday night was sold at the 7-Eleven at 1335 S. Bascom Ave., near Stokes Street and a block from Del Mar High School.
Lottery offices were closed Sunday, so no winner could come forth to claim the prize. And as of Sunday evening, no one had yet stopped by the store to verify his or her ticket, clerk Johnny Zhang said. But the store already was festooned with a California Lottery advertisement of its lucky sale, he said.
Sellers of winning tickets win too. In this case, 7-Eleven will reap $100,000 — or one-half of 1 percent of the jackpot — but it was not immediately clear how that would be split between the parent corporation and the owner of the franchise.
The holder of the winning ticket can verify the numbers — 19, 29, 36, 37, 41 and 20 — on the Internet or with the seller, then take the ticket to a California Lottery office (the nearest ones are in Hayward and South San Francisco), lottery spokeswoman Cathy Doyle Johnston said.
The $20 million jackpot is the biggest Lotto prize awarded since a Southern California seamstress won $47 million in December.
Lottery officials remind winners to sign the back of the ticket, photocopy both sides and place the ticket in a safe place until it can be taken to the lottery office.
The prize is worth about $10 million as a lump-sum payout, or $20 million, less 25 percent in federal taxes, paid out over 26 years, Doyle Johnston said.
Winning Lotto numbers are announced twice weekly for a $7 million award that increases by about $1 million with every set of numbers that no one has picked. Tickets cost $1 per try.
On Sunday afternoon at the Bascom Avenue 7-Eleven, Zhang reported that business was too brisk for him to waste time chatting with a reporter. “It’s not because of the Lotto. That will come later,” he said. “It’s the Super Bowl!”
Source: Mercury News