New Jersey’s Winning Billion Dollar Lottery Ticket Has Been Claimed

You know what they say about playing the lottery right?

Well, there are a lot of things they say actually, for example; you have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than winning.

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My favorite mantra about the lottery is that you can't win if you don't play, and in Jersey, we win big.

You may recall last spring the Mega Millions jackpot skyrocketed to 1.13 Billion Dollars and the winning ticket was sold right here in the Garden State.

The massive winning ticket was sold at a ShopRite in Neptune, and it's been 9 months without someone stepping forward to claim their winnings.

That has all changed now that someone has turned in their ticket to claim their massive Billion Dollar jackpot.

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New Jersey's Winning Billion Dollar Lottery Ticket Has Finally Been Claimed

According to CBS, the winning numbers for that Billion Dollar jackpot were 22, 11, 22, 29, 38 and the mega-plier was 4.

The winning ticket that matched all of those numbers wasn't generated by a computer officials say, in fact, they were carefully hand-selected by the person who bought the ticket.

 Who Is The Winner Of New Jersey's Billion Dollar Ticket?

We honestly don't know too much about the winner outside of the fact that they bought a winning 1.13 Billion Dollar winning ticket in Jersey.

We also know that the winner who started the process of claiming this massive jackpot is taking the lump sum payout options.

That means they're taking home 537 Million Dollars before taxes, whereas if they took an annuity payout they'd get the full amount over time.

Why Did It Take So Long For This Billion Dollar Ticket To Be Claimed?

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This is a question we'll likely never get an answer to, but I have a few theories.

Firstly, the winner may have needed 9 months to make the proper arrangements to pick up this life-changing money.

Just because they bought the ticket in Jersey doesn't mean they have to live there, so depending on their situation, it may have taken a while to make arrangements.

Another idea could be that the person literally just didn't know, maybe they totally forgot they even bought the ticket and didn't give it a second thought until they stumbled upon the ticket in their car, wallet, or coat.

We may never know why they took so long to claim the ticket, and odds are we'll never know since in Jersey you can remain anonymous while claiming a Mega Millions Jackpot.

If you ever do win the lottery, by the way, these are the steps experts say you should take first.