Texas woman wins lottery jackpot without matching a single number — and you can too
AUSTIN (KXAN) — A Texas woman has won a $250,000 lottery jackpot without matching a single number, and no — it's not fraud.
Texas Lottery's "All or Nothing" game gives customers a chance to win by matching all 12 numbers drawn, or none at all. The odds of winning either way are 1 in 2,704,156, according to Texas Lottery.
The woman, identified as An M. claimed the prize after playing on Lotto.com. In a press release, she said she would donate some of the money to an animal shelter in Lufkin. "If I ever win the big one, I am going to rebuild Winne Berry [animal shelter] to make it bigger," she said. "I will pay their expenses for the next two years for them to run it."
Lotto.com is currently available in seven states, including Texas, with plans to expand in the near future. Tickets purchased on the site help contribute to state-run programs in Texas, just the same as tickets purchased in stores.
Since being introduced in 1992, the Texas Lottery has handed out more than $12.9 billion in prizes to players who won at least $1,000 each. Almost 2,000 Texans have become overnight millionaires by purchasing a ticket.
A total of 1,969 players have won more than $1 million and 229 have won more than $10 million, according to data from the Texas Lottery Commission. Meanwhile, five lucky players have won at least $100 million.
The two largest lottery prizes ever in Texas were both a little more than $157 million. A ticket worth $360 million was claimed by a lottery trust in South Dakota in November 2023. The winner chose the cash value option, meaning they took home almost $157.4 million, before taxes.
An anonymous resident in Leander purchased a winning Mega Millions ticket worth $227 million for a drawing in September 2019. They also opted for the cash value option, taking home $157 million.
The largest prizes within Texas pale in comparison to the largest jackpots in U.S. history. A record $2.04 billion was won in California in a November 2022 Powerball drawing. That’s about 13 times more than the largest prize ever won in Texas.