On the day he bought the lottery tickets, he had "pretty much the feeling that I was lucky," said 24-year-old Manuel Franco about his $ 768 million (about € 682 million) profit. He has won the jackpot of the US Powerball lottery.
After the world's biggest jackpot of $ 1.6 billion in 2016 - also from the Powerball lottery - and the $ 1.5 billion jackpot last October on the Mega Millions lottery, this is the third largest jackpot in US history , The man from a suburb of Milwaukee in Wisconsin said he had bought tickets worth $ 10 and had barely noticed he was the winner. After the draw on March 27, he thought he had checked all the tickets, but then he would have found another ticket stuck to another.
"I thought I was going crazy," Franco said. "My heart started racing, I started screaming." In the second after his win he quit his job.
Otherwise, the lottery winner did not reveal much about himself. However, Wisconsin law does not allow lottery winners to remain anonymous.
Not even an hour later, after Franco appeared at the press conference, however, two Republicans announced a law that would allow future lottery winners in the US state to remain anonymous. Representative Gary Tauchen, who introduced the law among others, said lottery winners would often be victims of fraud, abuse and harassment.
The state also has some of the profit: The 768 million dollars would be paid over 29 years. However, Franco prefers to forego part of the money in order to receive the profit immediately. This will be paid to him at one time 477 million US dollars. Of this amount, Wisconsin will receive $ 36.4 million and Washington $ 114.6 million in taxes.