Powerball Winning Numbers, Results Feb. 21, 2015 Live Stream Drawing: $564 Million Jackpot Winner Appears in Puerto Rico
The Powerball winner from Puerto Rico has claimed last week's $564 million jackpot prize, island lottery officials have confirmed.
According to a report from Fox News Latino, the winner chose to remain anonymous after dropping by at the Puerto Rico Lottery office. Antonio Perez Lopez, assistant secretary of the island's lottery headquarters, said that the ticket was purchased at a Shell gasoline station in the southern coastal city of Ponce. The winner, however, is not residing there.
"For those who doubted that this prize could be won on the island, this is proof that the possibilities are real," Lopez added, as quoted by NBC News.
The ticket winner has 60 days to decide what to do with the prize, which he or she will share with other lottery winners from Texas and North Carolina, Fox News Latino explained. The Texas winner isn't identified yet, while "lottery officials in North Carolina have said that a lawyer informed them a client with a winning ticket is waiting to claim the money."
According to a separate report from NBC News, the winning ticket in Texas was sold at the Appletree Food Mart in Princeton in Dallas, while the North Carolina lucky ticket was from the Scotchman in Shallotte, Brunswick County. Furthermore, the owner of the Appletree Food Mart Chandra Siwakoti could receive a bonus up to $1 million.
The winning numbers are 11, 13, 25, 39 and 54, with a Powerball number of 19, the news outlet reported.
This is the first time that Powerball had a winner from Puerto Rico, CNN reported. He or she could also be the luckiest among the three winners. According to the news outlet, "The winner from Puerto Rico will likely pay significantly lower taxes than the winners from Texas and North Carolina."
However, for the winnings to not be subjected to the U.S. federal income taxes, the winning ticket should come from a Puerto Rican source of income, CNN clarified. Joy Hail, a senior tax analyst at Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting U.S., said that the Puerto Rican tax code rules that "prizes from lottery winnings are exempt from income tax." The prizes, however, are in a special tax "which ranges from 5% to 20% of the total winnings."
Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, has "only been included in the Powerball since October 2014," the news outlet noted.
The lucky winner has an option between "a lump sum payment of $101 million or 30 payments over 29 years," NBC News noted. Those who won the Powerball jackpot prize have 180 days to claim their money. Over the last two months, the Powerball jackpot prize has surged to become "the fifth-largest lottery prize in U.S. history."