Oregon lottery officials said Tuesday that the winner of the eighth-biggest lottery prize in U.S. history will not be announced for at least a couple more weeks until his ticket is verified.
The lottery officials will announce after they make arrangements for the payments.
A person with a ticket matching all six Powerball numbers in Saturday’s $1.3 billion pot emerged Monday to claim the prize from last weekend’s drawing. He or she bought the ticket at a convenience store in Portland, and the store has been identified.
The managers of the Plaid Pantry location plan to share their $100,000 bonus for selling the winning ticket. Jonathan Polonsky, CEO and president of Plaid Pantry, said the store’s other employees typically get a cut of lottery prize bonus payments, too.
Lottery officials said they were taking precautions to verify the win. They added that they must coordinate with the Multi-State Lottery Association in order to send the prize. The organization oversees the Powerball and Mega Millions lotteries. That will take time.
“We’ve never had a jackpot this large in Oregon won here. There’s a lot of moving pieces,” Oregon Lottery spokesperson Melanie Mesaros told the Associated Press.
The jackpot has a cash value of $621 million if the winner takes a lump sum rather than an annuity over 30 years, with an immediate payout followed by one installment per year.
According to the Oregon Lottery, the prize was the fourth-largest Powerball jackpot in history and the eighth-largest among U.S. jackpot games.
The largest jackpot in the history of U.S. lotteries was $2.04 billion won in California in 2022.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.