It's the largest prize in the Maryland Lottery's history
By Kate Northrop
An anonymous group stepped forward to claim a record $731.1 million Powerball jackpot drawn on Jan. 20, 2021, the sixth-largest jackpot in the U.S. and the longest roll in Powerball history with 36 consecutive drawings.
A group of anonymous winners dubbed "The Power Pack" finally came forward to claim the Maryland Lottery's largest jackpot.
As many would expect, the group chose to take the prize as a one-time lump sum cash option, a jaw-dropping $546.8 million, or about $366.6 million after federal and state taxes.
The lone winning ticket for the Jan. 20 Powerball drawing was purchased by one member of The Power Pack at the Coney Market grocery store on Lower Georges Creek Road in Lonaconing, a small town in Northwest Maryland bordering Pennsylvania. Earlier this year, the store received a $100,000 bonus for selling the Quick Pick, the only ticket the group purchased for that drawing.
The Power Pack member who purchased the ticket had the honors of discovering they had just won hundreds of millions of dollars and checked it over and over. Still in disbelief, he told his group, "This can't be right. I'm going to work."
Rest assured, the matching numbers on the ticket were as right as could be.
As the group claimed their prize from the Maryland Lottery, they told Lottery officials that they don't have any plans to change their current lifestyles. According to the Lottery, they are looking to invest the money to take care of their families and positively impact their communities "for generations to come."
"We are thrilled that the jackpot has been claimed, and we couldn't be happier for the winners," Maryland Lottery and Gaming Managing Director of Communications Carole Gentry said. "The prize generated nearly $49 million in tax revenue for the state, so everyone in Maryland wins."
The Powerball win easily eclipsed the previous record in Maryland Lottery history, a $218.6 million share of a $656 million Mega Millions jackpot claimed anonymously by The Three Amigos in the Mar. 30, 2012 drawing.
The jackpot was claimed four months after the drawing, but there was still plenty of time left to come forward. As lottery players in Maryland have 182 days after the draw date to claim prizes, The Power Pack had until July 21.
The winning numbers for the Jan. 20, 2021 Powerball jackpot were 40, 53, 60, 68, and 69, with Powerball number 22. The Power Play multiplier was 3. The odds of hitting the jackpot are 1 in about 292 million.
The next Powerball drawing will take place Saturday night at 10:59 pm EST for a $253 million jackpot.
Powerball is played in 45 states, plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Drawings are Wednesdays and Saturdays at 10:59 pm EST. Tickets cost $2 each.
Powerball lottery results are published within minutes of the drawing at USA Mega (www.usamega.com). The USA Mega website provides lottery players in-depth information about the United States' two biggest multi-state lottery games, Mega Millions and Powerball.
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Todd a well written article. Had forgotten all about this drawing until the article was read and media coverage of that small town. Does sound like locals which makes this huge win even better news IMHO.
Anonymity- that is the way to go when claiming a jackpot prize of that magnitude. Out here our lottery is forcing one to show up in either a gorilla suit or Nixon mask.
Raising both arms in a V shape with a victory sign is..optional.
Color me skeptical. Group play but the only purchase was a single quick pick ticket for a 731 million drawing? Me thinks the group was formed after the win which is all the more impressive as to the decency of the ticket purchaser. Congratulations to the winners!
Would somebody with the wherewithal please let us know if this exciting "The Power Pack" is an LLC (or what it's officially registered as)?
My reading comprehension might be bad but where does it say that the one person from the group bought just one ticket. Doesn't the lone ticket mean that only one ticket matched the lucky numbers and no one else had those numbers, therefore the lone ticket statement. The article didn't state how many tickets that one person from the group bought.
"...for selling the Quick Pick, the only ticket the group purchased for that drawing."
My apologies I really didn't see that sentence
The lone ticket can have several lines on it and one of the lines was the winning one.
Congrats to the Lucky group, enjoy.
Outstanding win!!! Congrats to all of you. Looking forward to the day that I am in the same position.
Well done Power Pack. 👍
No, a lone ticket means it was only one ticket with one set of numbers on it. The article also says it was "was the only ticket" the group purchased which was a quick pick. The conclusion being one person purchased a $2 dollar quick pick, realized at some point he/she won the 731 million dollar jackpot. Upon thinking about the win, became afraid to have that much money all to themselves, decided to asks family/friends to form the group "The Power Pack". All of this from one $2 QP ticket. Goes to show, it does only take one set of numbers to win... It just gives one better odds to have more than one set of numbers on a ticket. So depending on how many people are in The Power Pack group, 8 people technically contributed 25 cents each, if 4 people are in the group they contributed 50 cents each for a cut of 336 million dollars after taxes. The best $2 ever spent....Congratulations to the winner(s)
Well......if you say so.
I can only say that when I bought tix for my work pool, I bought A TICKET. That ONE ticket would have several lines of numbers on it. There were 8 people in the pool. Each one kicked in $2. I would buy one ticket that had 8 lines, each having unique sets of numbers.
Only one line could win.
I have a question. Can a group be formed after the drawing or does it have to exist before the drawing?
Look up IRS5754 and gives instructions on this. It doesn't say anything about if the group has to exist before. If it happens to me, will have a tax accountant worry about that!
IDK...emailed MD lottery this morning to ask since the article was vague about that! No word from them yet.
That is true. The question is if someone were to write about it after the fact how would they describe the ticket purchase. This article gives a description of the ticket purchase which one could reasonably conclude consisted of one play. It likely would have been written differently if there were multiple plays as part of a single ticket. It seems more of a stretch to infer into the written article what you are positing.
The Washington Post article about the Power Pack purchase contains the following: "The Power Pack bought just one ticket, and that was the winner, which is pretty rare, according to Gentry. Typically, players buy multiple tickets when it is a big jackpot."
Inasmuch as you can still infer that there were multiple plays on that single ticket purchase, it seems to me to be a more reasonable inference that there was a single ticket with a single play.
Whatever.
Yes, I do understand what you are saying because most people do say " I bought a lottery ticket" but it is not technically a (one) lottery ticket because it usually has more than one line or (set) of numbers. This is why the article specifically said "a lone" lottery ticket which means one set or line of numbers
I wonder where the next Powerball jackpot winner will be...
""a lone" lottery ticket which means one set or line of numbers"
For online games a "ticket" is a piece of paper printed by the lottery terminal that shows the details of the player's wager. Those details include the game and the drawing date(s) and each set of numbers that were played. The individual sets of numbers for a particular drawing are what the lotteries refer to as a "play". Not uncoincidentally, if you look at "How to play" on the PB website you might notice that it says "Powerball® costs $2 per play". If it cost $2 per ticket anyone with sense would buy a ticket with 10 sets of numbers for the maximum number of drawings allowed because you can do that on one ticket. Regardless of how many drawings or how many lines are on that ticket, if it's the only ticket you bought then it's your lone ticket for the drawing.
And of course all the information we have is at least second hand. We have no idea if the news reports are accurate, and we don't know if the information given to the MD lottery about the group's purchase is accurate.
"Can a group be formed after the drawing or does it have to exist before the drawing?"
It's all about ownership of the ticket. Once in a while groups of people have created legal entities specifically to play the lottery, but the vast majority of the time the legal entity that claims the prize is created after winning. If the group turns out to be a bunch of family members the IRS may be fussy about proof that the ticket was actually purchased on behalf of the group, because giving tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to somebody other than your spouse requires paying a gift tax. When the other members of the group are friends or coworkers the IRS is more trusting because most people don't give huge sums of money to friends and coworkers unless they have to.
OMG- Unfriggin real. I think we all understand that a single ticket can have multiple plays (individual games) on it; how many words are needed to state that? My curiosity was heightened based upon the actual words in the article, which I interpreted to indicate that it was a single ticket with a single game but was claimed by a group which I thought odd for a group play (especially for a $731 million jackpot). Some obviously pushed back on that simple deduction. As a result, I took it a little further which led me to a Washington Post article covering the same story. I posted two sentences from that article in an earlier post which I considered supportive of my position; here's another line from that same article, “The odds are pretty big regardless,” Gentry said, “But to get a win for one ticket — that makes for a much more interesting story.” The lottery spokesperson, Carole Gentry, highlights the limited play that resulted in the win. I remain impressed in my belief that the ticket purchaser formed a group (shared the jackpot with others) after purchasing a single ticket comprised of one game; kudos to the ticket purchaser and congratulations to the winners.
Maryland lottery never bothered to answer me email question if it was a single line on the ticket. Oh well.
I think K Y Floyd is on to what probably happened with this win in the second part of his statement. One person bought one ticket and won. He wanted to share with his family, maybe a few friends. He went to seek financial advice and a savvy tax person told him he would have to pay all of the Federal taxes on the money and then when he gave money away, he would also have to pay the gift tax on the money he gave away amounting to double taxation. The tax adviser than suggested that a lottery club be formed with several separate members so that the lottery would pay out the shares to each member and each member would pay the due amount of Federal tax without any gift taxes being involved. The strangeness of this arrangement would be there was only one ticket being involved with only pennies being donated by each club member as any such lotto club for lottery jackpots I ever ran, a group of 8 or 10 players would usually contribute $5 each and tickets purchased for the total collected. It could be possible to have the lottery jackpot equated to a share price based on the amount of money invested into the jackpot amount so that some players could be worth 5 shares for $5 and another valued at 3 shares for a $3 contribution. This $2 ticket might be divided up into several penny valued shares if say the owner of the ticket wanted to share with his family or friends, but not on an equal basis for each, keeping say half of the jackpot for himself, and giving various unequal shares valuing the other 50%. Then each person would pay their tax on the check they got from the state and IRS would be none the wiser on what had happened to prevent them getting extra money from gift tax. Then I guess this solution would result in the financial adviser feeling free to add a little extra to his bill!!