The largest jackpot in Cash 5 history has a winner. Though that did not happen without a bit of controversy.
Leading up to the Pennsylvania Lottery drawing for a record-breaking $2,488,733 prize, many state residents experienced difficulty in obtaining tickets for the drawing last Friday.
Some even took to Twitter to air their complaints. In response to these individual messages, the PA Lottery tweeted:
PA Lottery problems ahead of drawing
As KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh reported, many Pennsylvanians could not purchase tickets for much of the day last Friday.
Jeffrey Johnson, a spokesman for the PA Lottery, told the station an outage occurred due to connectivity issues with Verizon cellular service at several terminals around the state.
In addition to lottery terminals being down, there were also outages on the PA Lottery online app. The ticket checker feature was out of service for a similar period of time.
According to KDKA-TV, the Department of Revenue became aware of the outages around 8 a.m. By 3 p.m., Johnson said, the issues were resolved.
One ticket hits Cash 5 jackpot
The PA Lottery announced Monday that more than 156,300 Cash 5 tickets won prizes from Friday’s drawing. None bigger, though, than one sold in Columbia County.
The more-than $2.4 million jackpot, the largest in the 27-year history of Cash 5, had accrued since Feb. 22. The winner bought the ticket from the convenience store Sheetz in Berwick. The store receives a $10,000 bonus for selling the winning ticket.
The winning numbers are:
5-6-10-12-15
“We’re thrilled that the largest jackpot in Cash 5 history created a big winner,” Drew Svitko, executive director of the PA Lottery, said in a statement. “Friday’s historic drawing also produced more than 156,000 other Cash 5 winners all across Pennsylvania.”
There was only a single winning ticket, so the lucky player gets the entirety of the jackpot.
$150K Powerball also awarded
The day after the winning Cash 5 ticket hit, one Powerball ticket in Delaware County matched four of the five white balls drawn and the red Powerball to win $150,000.
Without the $1 Power Play option, per the PA Lottery, the prize would have been a mere $50,000.
The vendor of the winning ticket, Dutton Mill Beverage in Aston, earned a $500 bonus.
Powerball jackpot gets bigger and bigger
Meanwhile, the Powerball jackpot continues to build. The aforementioned PA Lottery player nabbed a nice prize, but no one matched every ball to take the estimated $414 million jackpot.
The estimated annuity value for Wednesday’s drawing stands at $448 million. Winners can also opt for the lump sum of $271.7 million cash. The prize is the 17th-largest lottery jackpot ever.