Mega Millions $1.35 billion winning ticket sold in Lebanon, Maine

LEBANON, Maine - There was one winning ticket in the $1.35 billion Mega Millions drawing and it was sold in Maine.

Someone bought the ticket at Hometown Gas and Grill in Lebanon in the southern part of the state near the New Hampshire border.

"There's quite a buzz at our small-town gas station this morning, I'll tell you that," owner Fred Cotreau told the Associated Press. The first thing he did was check to see he had bought the winning ticket, which he hadn't.

"Hopefully one of the residents and one of the regular customers is the winner," Cotreau said. "It's exciting to have sold it but it's just more exciting for a single winner and I'm just really hoping it's somebody here in town."

When he learned his store sold the winning ticket, he didn't believe it.

"Six a.m. this morning the caller ID showed an Augusta, Maine telephone number alerting me that our store had sold the winning ticket for the $1.3 billion jackpot. The next thing I expected was him to ask me for a gift card because I thought for sure it was a scam, but it wasn't," Cotreau told CNN Saturday. 

The lucky combination of numbers drawn late Friday night were: 30, 43, 45, 46, 61 and gold Mega Ball 14.

The winner, whose name is not yet known, overcame steep odds of 1 in 302.6 million, which led to three months of drawings without a claim on the jackpot.

"Congratulations to the Maine State Lottery, which has just won its first-ever Mega Millions jackpot," Pat McDonald, Ohio lottery director and lead director of the Mega Millions Consortium, said in a statement early Saturday.

The jackpot was the second largest in Mega Millions history and the fourth time the game has had a billion-dollar win. The largest Mega Millions jackpot in October 2018 was $1.53 billion claimed by a single ticket holder in South Carolina.

Friday's prosperous drawing also marked the seventh time there was a grand prize winner on Friday the 13th, a date superstitiously considered unlucky.

To claim the full $1.35 billion, the winner would need to take the money in an annuity with annual payments over 29 years. Most jackpot recipients prefer the reduced but quicker cash option, which for Friday night's drawing was an estimated $724.6 million.

The next grand prize drawing on Tuesday will drop to an estimated $20 million and a cash option of $10.7 million.

Until Friday night, there had been 25 straight drawings without a jackpot winner.

There were more than 7 million winning tickets across nine prize tiers Friday. Beyond Maine's jackpot, 14 tickets matched five white balls to claim the second-tier prize of $1 million. Four were sold in New York, two in California and one each in Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Texas, Mega Millions said.

Mega Millions is played in 45 states as well as Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands.