DES MOINES, Iowa -- Someone out there just became a multimillionaire.
California
Lottery officials say a ticket sold in San Jose matches all six numbers
drawn in Tuesday night in the Mega Millions game. The top prize soared
to an estimated $636 million, making it the second largest
jackpot in U.S. history.
The winning numbers drawn Tuesday were 8, 14, 17, 20, 39 and the Mega Ball number was 7.
The lucky ticket was purchased at
Jennifer Gifts on Tully Road in San Jose, according to California Lottery officials.
There was no immediate word on whether any other winning tickets were sold.
The jackpot had been $586 million, but
lottery officials increased it Tuesday morning because of strong ticket sales
ahead of the night's drawing.
The jackpot now trails only a $656
million Mega Millions pot in March 2012.
Tickets
are purchased by a customer Monday, Dec. 16, 2013, in Hialeah, Fla.
The Mega Millions jackpot soared to $586 million on Monday amid a frenzy
of ticket purchases, a jump that pushed the prize closer to the $656
million U.S. record set last year. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz)
Alan Diaz, AP
Paula Otto, lead director for Mega
Millions, said officials expected about 70 percent of the possible number
combinations to be purchased. The cash option is $341 million, before taxes.
CBS News correspondent
Michelle Miller spoke with a New York City woman who jumped on the bandwagon.
"I only bought four, just thinking: You
know what? They say, All you need is a dollar to win. We are four people on it
so we're hoping for the best," said Helen Tirado.
Unfortunately for Tirado
and others like her, changes in recent months mean dwindled chances for winning
Mega Millions. Odds of winning the jackpot used to be 1 in 176 million. This
past October, those odds changed to 1 in 259 million. Players used to have to
pick six numbers from 1 to 56, but now it's 1 to 75.
Sociology
professor Iddo Tavory, who studies the behavior of how people make
decisions, says when lottery players start to fantasize about their
future after winning
the lottery, their choice to enter seems rational.
"What houses they would
buy, what they would buy their mother, what they would buy their friends, what
car they would drive," Tavory said. "Where you feel like there's
actually something there that could happen, not just kind of a fantasy you're
having out of nowhere, I mean then, the odds don't matter that much."
Lottery officials tell
CBS News, the majority of Mega Millions sales come on the final day -- and with
today's snow across parts of the country -- we will have to wait to see how
that affects the projected $250 million in sales.
Mega Millions is played in 43 states,
the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
