Pie In The Sky Moment: $432 Million Lottery Ticket Bought At New York City Pizza Spot

Topline

The $432 million winning Mega Millions lottery ticket was bought on Tuesday night at Pronto Pizza, a humble, no-frills pizza joint in Midtown Manhattan just a stone’s throw from Rockefeller Center, according to the New York Lottery website.

People walk past the New York Lottery Customer Service Center in Lower Manhattan, Oct. 23, 2018 in ... [+] New York City. (Photo by Drew Angerer)

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Key Facts

The jackpot’s numbers were 36, 41, 45, 51, 56 and Mega Ball number 13.

It comes out to about $315 million cash, Mega Millions said in a press release on Wednesday.

A $1 million second prize ticket was also sold in Connecticut.

Wednesday’s Powerball prize is set to be an even bigger sum of $490 million.

Big Number

1 in 302,575,350. Those are the odds of winning a Mega Millions jackpot, according to the New York Lottery’s website.

Key Background

The $432 million Mega Millions haul had been growing since the most recent win on June 8 in Illinois. The last time a New York City resident took the prize was in January 2016, when a Staten Island woman and her husband won $169 million, according to the New York Post.

Tangent

Pronto Pizza’s owner, David Khiralla, said the eatery had sold several other winning tickets in the past, albeit for smaller sums. “It’s a lucky place. There’s no secret at all, it’s luck,” Khiralla told Eyewitness News. “Nothing in the pizza, no secret in the pizza.” It’s not the first time pizza has played some fortuitous role for lottery winners. In February a man in Massachusetts bought a $1 million winning ticket at an Uno Pizzeria & Grill while picking up a takeout order; in October 2016 a Connecticut pizza shop owner took home a $50,000 prize; that February a pizza delivery man in California won $1.2 million from a ticket he purchased using tip money; and in 2014 four Maryland pizza parlor employees evenly split their $1 million Powerball winnings.

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