The biggest individual lottery winner in history is Edwin Castro, who won Powerball's record $2.04 billion jackpot on a single ticket bought in Altadena, California, in November 2022. Behind him stretches a short, strange club: anonymous trusts in South Carolina and Maine, a syndicate of 90 ticket shares in Italy, a couple who told the world over breakfast television in England. The money is only half the story — how each winner handled the claim is the other half.
Edwin Castro: the $2.04 billion winner
Castro bought his ticket at Joe's Service Center, a gas station in Altadena, and chose the lump sum: $997.6 million in cash rather than 30 years of payments averaging tens of millions each. California publishes winner names, so anonymity was never an option; he skipped the press conference, issued a statement, and became briefly famous for real-estate purchases across Los Angeles. The station owner did well too — California pays a $1 million retailer bonus for selling the record ticket. Castro's win remains the largest prize ever collected by one person.
Mega Millions' biggest winners
Mega Millions' record $1.602 billion prize (Florida, August 2023) was claimed months later through a legal entity, Saltines Holdings LLC — Florida allows trust and LLC claims, and the individuals behind it stayed out of the spotlight. The game's second-biggest win tells the anonymity story even better: the $1.537 billion South Carolina jackpot of October 2018 was claimed by a woman known publicly only as “the sole winner”, who waited 131 days, took the cash and, through her lawyer, disclosed nothing else — the largest jackpot ever claimed by an anonymous winner. Maine's $1.348 billion winner (January 2023) followed the same playbook through an LLC, while Illinois' $1.337 billion prize (July 2022) was split privately between two people who had agreed to share for years.
Powerball's other record winners
The $1.787 billion drawing of September 2025 produced two winning tickets — Missouri and Texas — each worth roughly $893.5 million advertised. The $1.765 billion October 2023 prize went to a California ticket claimed by Theodorus Struyck on behalf of a small group of players. And the drawing that started the billion-dollar era, January 2016's $1.586 billion jackpot, was split three ways across the country: John and Lisa Robinson in Tennessee (who went on television with the ticket before even validating it), Maureen Smith and David Kaltschmidt in Florida, and Marvin and Mae Acosta in California, who waited six months and released a single statement.
Europe's biggest winners
Europe's record belongs to a crowd: SuperEnalotto's €371.1 million jackpot of February 2023 was shared by 90 ticket shares sold nationwide at €5 each in a syndicate promotion — roughly €4.1 million per share. The continent's single-ticket record is EuroMillions' €250 million cap, first paid in 2025 to an anonymous ticket holder in Ireland. The UK offers the culture contrast in one summer: Joe and Jess Thwaite won £184 million in May 2022 and chose full publicity, giving interviews within days, while two months later a £195 million winner — Britain's biggest ever — stayed completely anonymous. Both options are legal there; the Thwaites simply preferred living without a secret.
What winning that big actually looks like
Patterns repeat across the club. Nearly every US mega-winner takes the cash option — roughly half the advertised figure — preferring control today over 30 annual instalments. Where state law allows (Florida, South Carolina, Maine among them), winners increasingly claim through trusts or LLCs for privacy; where it doesn't (California publishes names), they manage publicity instead. The cautionary tales are real but avoidable: West Virginia's Jack Whittaker, who won $314.9 million in 2002 and saw the fortune unravel through theft, lawsuits and tragedy, is the case every winner's lawyer cites when advising the quiet, well-planned claim. The sums behind these stories sit in context in our biggest lottery jackpots table — and the one thing every winner here did first was simply hold a ticket in that night's draw, as covered in our guide to how to play the lottery.
Record winners beyond the top table
Three more stories round out the club. Mavis Wanczyk won Powerball's $758.7 million jackpot in August 2017 — then the biggest prize ever taken on a single ticket — called her employer of 32 years that night to say she wasn't coming back, and gave one press conference before disappearing happily from public life. Manuel Franco, a 24-year-old from Wisconsin, claimed 2019's $768.4 million Powerball prize and admitted he'd checked his ticket in disbelief for days. And Britain's Adrian and Gillian Bayford took £148 million on EuroMillions in 2012 — for years the benchmark UK win, and a case study in how publicity, generosity and pressure reshape a winner's life. Different countries, same pattern: the win is instant, and everything after it is management.
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Frequently asked questions
Who is the biggest lottery winner of all time?
Edwin Castro, who won Powerball's world-record $2.04 billion jackpot in November 2022 on a single ticket bought in Altadena, California, and took a $997.6 million lump sum — the largest prize ever collected by one person.
Who won the biggest Mega Millions jackpot?
The record $1.602 billion prize from August 2023 was claimed through Saltines Holdings LLC in Florida, keeping the winners' identities private. The biggest fully anonymous win remains South Carolina's $1.537 billion in 2018.
Can lottery winners stay anonymous?
It depends on where the ticket was sold. Some US states allow anonymous or trust/LLC claims; others, like California, publish winner names. In the UK and much of Europe winners choose, which is why Britain's biggest winner is unknown while the £184 million Thwaites went public.
Do big lottery winners take the cash or the annuity?
Almost all US mega-jackpot winners take the cash option — a lump sum of a bit under half the advertised annuity value. European jackpots such as EuroMillions are paid as a single lump sum by design, so there's no choice to make.