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Winning $314 Million Powerball Ticket Sold In Indiana

Officials Wait For Winning Ticket Holder To Come Forward

POSTED: 1:46 pm PDT August 26, 2007
UPDATED: 5:41 am PDT August 27, 2007

Lottery officials are waiting for the winner of a massive Powerball jackpot to come forward after the winning ticket worth $314.3 million was sold in this city on the Indiana-Ohio state line.

Lottery officials won't know who holds that ticket until someone claims it, said Mark Sirkin, a spokesman for the Hoosier Lottery.

"We don't how many people -- if it's one person, or a hundred people -- is the winner. We have no idea. Whoever it is, they're wealthy," Sirkin said.

The ticket bearing the winning numbers -- 2, 8, 23, 29, 35 and the Powerball: 19 -- that were drawn Saturday night was sold at a Speedway convenience store in Richmond.

If the winner chooses to take the cash option, the winnings are a cool $145 million. After taxes, that would be about $105 million.

The Hoosier Lottery's executive director, Kathryn A. Densborn, told reporters at the store about 70 miles east of Indianapolis that aside from the winning ticket, a ticket matching five of the six numbers was sold in the northwestern Indiana city of Munster and is worth $200,000.

"Indiana is a very lucky state. ... It's a big day in Indiana," Densborn said.

At the Speedway store, workers and customers were excited and wondering aloud if anyone might know the big winner, said Gerald Fraley, Speedway's eastern Indiana manager, who oversees 10 stores. The Richmond store will receive $100,000 from the lottery for selling the ticket.

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"People are sitting on pins and needles, wondering who it is. Is it one person, is it multiple people, is it someone local here in Richmond?" Fraley said. "All the employees are wondering who sold the ticket."

Fraley said he and his wife were about to leave for church when he got a call from a Hoosier Lottery official who told him that the winning ticket was sold at a Speedway store in eastern Indiana. He said it took the lottery a while to determine which store sold the ticket.

"I told my wife, 'I can't go to church. Go ahead without me.' And then I had a phone in each ear for about three hours," Fraley said.

Many people drive in from Ohio to buy tickets in the border city along Interstate 70.

"I've been coming here buying 20 tickets a week for the past 10 to 15 years," said Michael Elkins, who lives in Dayton, Ohio.

The winner has six months to come forward and claim the prize. Indiana leads the nation in Powerball winners with 34.

Powerball is played in Arizona, Connecticut, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Delaware, Indiana, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, the Virginia Islands, Wisconsin and West Virginia.

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