Lottery Winner Comes Forward With 3 Tickets

Three identical Mega Millions lottery tickets were sold

As of Wednesday, somebody was holding on to three winning Mega Millions tickets sold in Solana Beach. Well, the winner finally came forward on Thursday.

The same person, who has remained anonymous, bought all three tickets, worth $204,482 each.

In all, five identical Mega Millions lottery tickets were sold for the April 30 drawing. Three of those were sold in one place: the Qwik Korner Deli & Grocery in Solana Beach.

Lottery officials said it's not uncommon for the same person to claim a prize with duplicate tickets. Players will use the advance draw system and sometimes forget that they've already played, the spokesperson said. That can result in overlapping weeks. However, the officials said three duplicate tickets were a little unusual.

The owner of the family-run store, Danny Yaldo, said he won't get any money from the three winning tickets sold at his store. He would receive 0.5 percent of the winnings only if all six numbers were chosen correctly. Still, his reputation as being a "lucky" store has been attracting business.

The two other winning Mega Millions tickets were sold in California, too: One was bought in Garden Grove and another was purchased in the Sierra foothill town of La Grange.

In other lottery news, it was announced Thursday that a $23 million Lotto ticket was sold in San Diego.

That winning ticket with all six numbers in Wednesday night’s SuperLotto Plus draw was sold at the Vons grocery store on Mission Gorge Road in Santee, according to lottery officials.

The winning numbers are 7, 8, 11, 15, 31 and the mega-number is 27.

The holder of the winning ticket could choose a one-time cash payout of roughly half the $23 million total or opt for annual payments over 26 years.

"The retailer who sold the jackpot ticket, Vons Grocery, will receive a bonus of one-half percent, or $115,000, for selling the jackpot winning ticket," California Lottery spokesperson Alex Traverso said.

Five other tickets sold matched five of six numbers. Each of those is worth $13,363.

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