10
$1.08 billion. Powerball, July 2023
Downtown Los Angeles, and a jackpot that rolled for three months to get there.
$558.1mCash option.
Sold at Las Palmitas Mini Market in downtown LA, a small shop whose owner said the $1 million retailer bonus was more money than the business had made in years.
That detail is worth sitting with. The retailer bonus is the only part of a jackpot that reliably lands somewhere useful and stays there, a fixed, modest, life-changing amount going to a small business rather than a nine-figure sum landing on one household.
It is also the only part nobody queues up for.
California's rule is the opposite: the name, the city and the amount are public record, and the lottery publishes them. The state's argument is transparency, proving that prizes are genuinely paid to real people. The counter-argument is every story in this article about what happens to a named winner, and both sides have a point.
The thing the list keeps saying
Read ten of these in a row and a pattern shows up that no single story makes obvious. The winners who took months to claim, hired lawyers first and stayed anonymous where the law let them are the ones we hear nothing more about. The ones who held the novelty cheque up on television are the ones with a second news story attached.
That is not a moral about greed. It is a practical observation about what a name and a number do when they are published together, and it is the single most useful thing in the record book.
The other useful thing: every figure here is a headline annuity. If you ever find yourself reading one of these numbers on a sign, halve it, then take about a third off for tax, and you will be much closer to the amount that would actually arrive.