Ohio Lottery system fails before drawing

Wednesday, March 07, 2007 posted 07:07 AM EST

Some lottery players in Ohio were unable to purchase tickets for the record $370 million Mega Millions jackpot Tuesday night after the state's gaming system went down across the state.

The winning numbers were announced from a special location: a studio in Times Square. They were 16-22-29-39-42, and the Mega Ball was 20. It wasn't immediately known how many tickets were sold nationwide or who, if anyone, held the winning ticket.

The deadline for buying tickets was 10:45 p.m. but lottery players in Ohio who waited until the last minutes to place their wagers were out of luck. The Ohio gaming system went down at about 10:20 p.m., said Mardele Cohen, a spokeswoman for the Ohio lottery.

"I'm sure there's going to be some disappointed people. We, ourselves, are very disappointed. This is not a time when you want something like this to happen," Cohen said. "For those people who wanted to make a wager and didn't get a chance, we're very, very sorry."

She said it's unclear what caused the problem and that it would not likely be until Wednesday until the system can be reviewed.

No problems were reported as of late Tuesday in several other states, including Illinois, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Texas.

New Yorkers were buying more than 1 million tickets an hour, said Robert McLaughlin, the state's lottery director. Virginia retailers were selling about 8,550 tickets per minute as Tuesday night's drawing approached.

"The fever is definitely hot and heavy now," said Sheila Hill-Christian, lottery director in Virginia.

After the jackpot hit $355 million on Monday, the 12 participating Mega Millions states agreed to move Tuesday night's drawing from the game's usual home in Atlanta to New York's Times Square.

On Tuesday, Mega Millions officials raised the estimated payout to $370 million, if taken as an annuity. The jackpot's estimated cash option value was $221.1 million, before taxes. The odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot are about 1 in 176 million.

The largest previous multistate lottery jackpot was $365 million in 2006, when eight workers at a Nebraska meat processing plant hit the Powerball lotto. The Big Game lotto, the forerunner of Mega Millions, paid out a $363 million jackpot in 2000.

At the Fountain News convenience store in Cincinnati, manager Vinay Patel expected to sell 2,500 to 3,000 tickets by the end of the day.

"Some people have bought as many as 200 tickets at a time," Patel said Tuesday morning.

At a Los Angeles convenience store, maps specialist Rikki Bilder bought nine Mega Millions tickets with two co-workers. She said they would quit their jobs if they won.

"I would probably hire a financial consultant, because you can't put this kind of money in 100 banks," said Bilder, 69. "I would study finance, and give to charity. Oh, and I would probably give some of it to my children. I'm old, I'm not going to live 100 years."

At New York's Port Authority Bus Terminal, construction worker Andelko Kalinic had an idea of what he would do if his Mega Millions ticket paid off.

"Go to the moon," he said. "Why not?"

Mega Millions tickets are sold in California, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Texas, Virginia and Washington state.

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