News writer; Opinion columnist
For a month in January, a woman in Virginia owned the most valuable nightstand in the world. Melena Hill’s bedroom furniture wasn’t an antique or once owned by royalty; instead, it was what was inside it that made it worth $3 million.
Melena Hill purchased a Mega Millions ticket for the January 9 drawing, put it in her drawer, and forgot about it. Only a month later, she checked it and realized that she was holding onto a multi-million dollar winner.
The winning Mega Millions numbers for that draw were 12, 15, 32, 33, 53, the Mega Ball number 2, and the Megaplier x3.
Big win
It was a win of a lifetime for the Portsmouth resident, and while she just missed out on the $165 million grand prize in the drawing, Hill wasn’t complaining about her big prize.
She told the Virginia Lottery, “My stomach had butterflies. I screamed a bit!” She did not explain why she waited so long to check her ticket.
The winning numbers for the January 9 drawing were 12, 15, 32, 33, and 53, and the Mega Ball was 24. Hill used the automatic quick-pick option to select her numbers. She bought the ticket at the Murphy USA gas station in Suffolk.
Hill matched the five white numbers but missed on the Mega Ball. Typically, this would result in a $1 million prize, but because she also purchased a megaplier, her win tripled when the 3X multiplier was selected before the drawing.
Because the Virginia Lottery automatically withholds 24% of lottery winnings over $5,000 for federal taxes and another 4% for state taxes, so she actually received a check for $2,280,000.
Virginia wins big
Hill isn’t the first Virginia Mega Millions player to strike it rich. In fact, she joins a long state tradition of Old Dominion winners taking home big prizes from the multi-state game. Ten Virginia players have won the game’s top prize, with their winnings totaling up to almost one billion dollars.
The state’s biggest Mega Millions winner is J.R. and Peggy Triplett of Winchester, VA, who cashed a grand prize-winning ticket worth $239 million from the February 20, 2004 drawing.
Bernard and Tucker Adcock of Buckingham, VA, would have won an even bigger prize, but they had to split their $330 million jackpot from the August 31, 2007, drawing four ways, meaning they only collected $82.5 million.
Steve Williams of Shenandoah, VA, won the October 16, 2009, drawing with a ticket worth $200 million.
While there were several nine-figure Mega Millions prize winners in the state, Joe and Sue Claffy of Rappahannock County, VA, took home the smallest jackpot when they split their top prize with another winner and collected $19 million.
Growing jackpot
2024 has seen a few Mega Millions players take home million-dollar prizes, but it's been four months since anyone has claimed a jackpot. The last big payout was four months ago when a $395 million grand prize was won on December 8, 2023.
Interestingly, the top prize was split between two tickets purchased at the same Ventura, California, Chevron station.
Since that last big win, there have been 26 consecutive drawings without a jackpot winner, and the grand prize for the upcoming March 12 drawing has grown to $735 million, which is the sixth highest in Mega Millions history.
However, in that same time period, there have been over 18.5 million prize-winning tickets, with values ranging from $2 to $4 million. Since the December 8 drawing, thirty players have won at least one million dollars in seventeen different states.
How to win
Mega Millions drawings take place twice a week on Tuesday and Friday at 11 PM EST. The game features a cumulative jackpot, so the top prize grows after every drawing with no winner.
Tickets cost $2 each, but players have the option to add a megaplier for an extra dollar. The Megaplier number is drawn before the Mega Millions numbers are picked, and it can multiply your prize by two, three, four, or five times the original amount. However, the Megaplier does not apply to the top prize.
To fill out their ticket, players must choose five numbers between one and seventy and one Mega Ball number between one and twenty-five.
Your numbers do not have to be in the exact order as they are drawn, but all winning numbers must be on the same ticket. The odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot are 1 in 302,575,350.
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