RUTHERFORD, N.J. – A couple who were the sole winners of a $258 million Mega Millions jackpot say some of their winnings will go to help Hurricane Katrina victims.
Harold Lerner, 60, got a call from a friend telling him someone in Rutherford had bought the winning ticket in the Sept. 16 drawing.
“Little did I know it was my wife who purchased the ticket. We ran downstairs. On the top of the newspaper were the five numbers, and I read off the numbers,” he said at a news conference Friday.
“She says, ‘Honey, I think we’re millionaires,’” he said. “We hugged, kissed and embraced. I’m thinking, ‘This can’t be right, maybe we made a mistake.’ We checked it 500 times.”
Sure enough, the winning numbers from the Sept. 16 drawing – 5, 16, 41, 46, 50 and the Gold Mega Ball number 1 – were all there.
The couple grew paranoid, Helen Lerner said, and stashed the ticket in her underwear drawer. Then they went for a walk around town, where residents were buzzing about the as-yet unknown winner.
Since Helen Lerner, who bought the ticket, chose the cash option, they will get $156.1 million, lottery officials said. The federal tax bite will amount to about a quarter of that.
Along with helping Katrina evacuees, they said some of their winnings will go to Seton Hall University in South Orange, where Helen Lerner graduated in 1976.
Also, effective immediately, both are retired, he from his sales job, she from her position with a drug wholesaler.
“We’re really in dreamland at this point,” Harold Lerner said. “I still don’t believe it.”
The richest undivided lottery jackpot in U.S. history was the $314.9 million Powerball jackpot on Christmas Day 2002.
Mega Millions is a multistate lottery game offered in Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Texas, Virginia and Washington.
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