Experts explain how Calif. keeps creating Powerball billionaires like Edwin Castro, Theodorus Struyck
California certainly lives up to its name as the Golden State — with four of the five biggest winners in Powerball history residing there, claiming prizes worth over $6B in total.
But is there a secret strategy Californians, such as $2.04B winner Edwin Castro, share when it comes to picking winning digits, or is it just plain luck? Number crunchers have an explanation.
Jared James — founder of Lottoedge.com which analyzes lottery data — points out California leads the way in “sideline players,” those who only buy tickets when the jackpot soars.
“Once it hits that $500M mark, people who don’t usually play start coming off the sidelines, and California sticks out as a clear outlier when it comes to that,” James said.
He says when that marker is hit, California leads the way in ticket sales, followed by Florida, with the two states representing up to 25% of all tickets sold.
“When Powerball [jackpots] exceed $500M, California ticket sales on average are 2.6x larger than for those under $500m [whereas the] average increase across all other states is 2.45x larger,” James added.
He also pointed out California has a more affluent population than many states, with higher income earners who “might buy $40 worth of tickets” instead of “someone in Idaho who might buy $10 worth,” which brings up the percentage of tickets sold in the state.
However, both James and a statistician agree that selling more tickets doesn’t make any one ticket more likely to win that the other.
Dr Curtis Bennett, a Dean of the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at California State University Long Beach, told The Post: “It all comes down to sheer luck.”
“California is so big it’s got a good chance of being one of the places we might see more winners than a smaller state, purely just because of the population,” he told The Post.
The odds of winning a Powerball jackpot are about one in 292 million, according to Dr Bennett.
“You get luck wherever it shows up. Sometimes it shows up in California, sometimes it shows up somewhere random.”
While it may appear California is hogging all the glory, when the full list of jackpots is added up, other states have won more often.
Pennsylvania has sold 18 winning Powerball jackpot tickets — the most of any state. Florida follows with 16 winning tickets.
POWERBALL’S BIGGEST WINS:
- $2.04B – Won by Edwin Castro of Altadena, California, on Nov. 2022
- $1.76B – Won by a group represented by Theo Struyck, Frazier Park, CA, Oct. 2023
- $1.58B – Won by Marvin and Mae Acosta of Eastvale, California, but shared with winners from Florida and Tennessee, Jan. 2016
- $1.35B – Won by an anonymous player in Lebanon, Maine, Jan. 2023
- $1.08B – Still Unclaimed prize, sold in Los Angeles, California, Jul. 2023
California, New York, Indiana, New Jersey, Missouri, and Louisiana have all sold over 10 Powerball jackpot-winning tickets.
“When jackpots are less you see some of the smaller states win a disproportionate amount of the time,” James noted.
“We looked at 20 years of Powerball winners and states like Louisiana have won over 4% of jackpots that are not in the billions, even though they only account for 1% of sales. So those smaller places are [statistically] winning more often.”
Since 2003, of the 49 jurisdictions that participate in Powerball, four are yet to sell a winning jackpot ticket: Mississippi, North Dakota, the Virgin Islands, and Wyoming, according to The Hill.
When it comes to cashing in the golden ticket, lotto winners can choose to receive their money in one of two ways; an immediate lump sum deposit or through through 30 annual payments invested in government bonds.
The advertised jackpot is actually a projection of the total received over the 30-year investment, whereas the lump sum is how much money the Powerball actually has on hand to give out.
Despite the one-off payment averaging around 52% of the jackpot, all but five of 239 big winners between 2003-2023 have chosen that option.
In California, the winner’s full name and the name and location of the business that sold their lucky ticket are required to be disclosed.
Edwin Castro became the largest-ever Powerball winner with the $2.04 billion jackpot in Nov. 2022. However, he didn’t become a billionaire overnight as he chose the lump sum, which amounted to $997 million.
The winner of Powerball’s second largest jackpot prize, worth $1.76B was revealed last week — five months after the life-changing drawing.
Theodorus Struyck was named as the representative of a group who bought the billion-dollar ticket at a market in Frazier Park, Calif. for the October 11 drawing, the California Lottery announced.
It was not revealed how many people were a part of the group who claimed the massive winnings.
Breaking California’s run, a $1.35bn win was announced in Lebanon, Maine, in January 2023, but the state’s privacy laws have prevented the winner’s identity from being released.
