The Powerball jackpot has soared to an estimated $1.04 billion after no tickets matched all six numbers in Saturday night’s drawing.
Saturday night’s drawing produced white balls 19, 30, 37, 44 and 46 and red Powerball 22.
The $1.04 billion prize – an estimated $478.2 million in cash value – is the second-largest jackpot this year, topped only by a $1.08 billion prize won on July 19 by a ticketholder in California.
So are PowerBall and Mega Millions now rigged to make sure that the jackpot always hits $1B before a winner is drawn?
Rigged in the sense that they intentionally made the odds so long as to almost ensure it would routinely go weeks and weeks without a winner. So yes, it is by design.
I was told years ago when I worked at a convince store our loto rep said white balls coming out of the machine are fake it never random. They decide when it pays out. He claims it only pays out when they earn double what will be paid out. This back when loto got up to like 4 million. So they would earn 8 and then give the illusion that the white balls came out and gave a winner.
He says they preload the winning numbers. Since it all electronic they can keep people from winning for as long as they want because they know all numbers submitted.