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$590m Powerball jackpot winner is '26-year-old singer mother from small Florida town'

The winner of the the largest single-ticket jackpot in history is said to be a 26-year-old single mother from the small city of Zephyrhills, Florida, residents told MailOnline.

No one stepped forward on Monday to claim the $590million winning ticket, which was sold at a Publix supermarket sometime before Saturday’s massive Powerball lottery drawing.

If the winner is, indeed, only one woman - she will be the biggest single lottery winner ever. The jackpot, if taken as a lump sum, will result in a $270million payday after taxes.

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Customers come and go from the Publix supermarket where the sole winner of the 590.5 million US Dollar Powerball jackpot is reported to have recently purchased their winning-ticket in Zephyrhills, in Florida

Lucky draw: The Powerball numbers for the record-breaking jackpot are drawn at the Florida lottery studio

By way of perspective, the entire city budget for Zephyrhills was $49million this year.

Resident Gary Cooper, a transplant from New York, told MailOnline that news of the lottery win is the biggest news the city of 13,000 has seen in the two decades he has lived there.

‘Everybody’s talking about it. It’s a small town, you know? Everybody knows everybody and everybody wants to know who it is,’ he said.

The winner must travel 250 miles north to Florida Lottery headquarters in the state capital of Tallahassee to claim the ticket and must do it within 60 days.

Once claimed, the winner will be publicly announced by the lottery.

Downtown Zephyrhills, Fla., the town where Saturday's $590 million Powerball jackpot was sold

A television news crew reports from the parking lot of the Publix supermarket where the sole winner of the 590.5 million US Dollar Powerball jackpot is reported to have recently purchased their winning-ticket

Until the lucky ticket holder is revealed, the Zephyrhills will continue to speculate about the identity of the winner.

‘We’ve heard she’s a 26-year-old single mom and she lives right here in town,’ Mr Cooper said.

Other details, are less certain - even among the most well-connected residents.

‘I’ve heard that she was a cashier at Publix. Then I heard, no, she works at Wal-Mart. Then I heard she’s a cashier at McDonald’s. I guess we won’t really know until the winner claims the prize,’ he said.

Joan Albertson, a Zephyrhills resident, said she had also heard the rumor that the winner worked at Publix and that she didn’t show up for work on Sunday.

When she went into the store on Monday, she said, a veil of silence had dropped over the staff.

‘It was eerily quiet. Nobody was saying anything,’ Ms Albertson said.

  More... Is a 26-year-old woman America's biggest ever single lottery winner? Tiny Florida town stunned after $590m Powerball jackpot ticket is traced to this store Record-breaking 128lb Python that measures 18ft and 8in long is captured and killed in Florida Woman who got all six Powerball numbers but bought her ticket an hour too late

Standing outside her well-kept double-wide trailer in town, she shrugged: ‘I don’t know, that’s what I heard. All I know is I didn’t win, otherwise I wouldn’t still be living here.’

Another rumor circulating among town residents on Facebook is that a group of employees at Publix’s deli counter won the jackpot.

It was claimed that several of the deli employees never showed for work on Monday.

However, the prevailing wisdom among the gossiping class in Zephyrhills is that the winner is a lone woman.

One previous lottery jackpot was larger than the $590million sum - a $656million MegaMillions drawing last March - though three tickets matched the winning numbers and had to split the prize.

Only one ticket from Saturday’s Powerball drawing matched the numbers 10, 13, 14, 22 and 52, with a Powerball of 11. The chances of winning were astronomically low: 1 in 175.2 million.

After a frenzied few days of buying the $2 tickets across the nation, the winning numbers of 10-13-14-22-52 and a Powerball of 11 were drawn on Saturday night.

BREAKING THE BANK: TOP 10 LOTTO PAYOUTS OF ALL-TIME1. $656.0 million, Mega Millions, March 30, 2012 (3 tickets from Kansas, Illinois and Maryland)2. $590 million, Powerball, May 18, 2013 (1 ticket from Florida)3. $587.5 million, Powerball, Nov. 28, 2012 (2 tickets from Arizona and Missouri)4. $390.0 million, Mega Millions, March 6, 2007 (2 tickets from Georgia and New Jersey)5. $380.0 million, Mega Millions, Jan. 4, 2011 (2 tickets from Idaho and Washington)6. $365.0 million, Powerball, Feb. 18, 2006 (1 ticket from Nebraska)7. $363.0 million, The Big Game, May 9, 2000 (2 tickets from Illinois and Michigan)8. $340.0 million, Powerball, Oct. 19, 2005 (1 ticket from Oregon)9. $338.3 million, Powerball, March 23, 2013 (1 ticket from New Jersey)10. $337.0 million, Powerball, Aug. 15, 2012 (1 ticket from Michigan)

Speculation in Zephyrhills has reached feverish levels of speculation as the residents prepare to discover who among them has become the nations latest multi-millionaire.

'Who ever it is, I will be glad to see if we know them or anything like that,' said Brian Miller, according to ABC News Radio.

'I can't believe it. It's shocking,' said Sara Jeltis to ABC News Radio. 'Out of the whole country, this Publix in little Zephyrhills would be the winner.'

It's an amount too high for many to imagine. Compare it to the budget for the city of Zephyrhills: This year's figure is just more than $49 million. The winning Powerball jackpot is 12 times that.

The as-yet unnamed winner is believed to have come forward yesterday and now has 60 days to decide whether she wants to take the incredible windfall in one go or in 30 annual instalments of about £13million each.

And Florida has no state income tax, so if the winner lives there — and wasn’t just in town for Zephyrhills’ popular skydiving tours — he or she will save millions more.

Publix spokeswoman Maria Brous said there are a lot of rumors about who won, but the store doesn't know. 'We're excited for the winner or winners,' she said.

Gary Cooper, of Zephyrhills, told ABC News he 'heard' that a 26-year-old woman had the winning ticket.

The lucky ticket was bought sometime Saturday or earlier at a Publix supermarket in Zephyrhills, a city of about 13,000 people best known around the state for its brand of spring water with the same name.

The town was also home to notorious radiologist Carl Tanzler, who developed a morbid obsession for a young Cuban American tuberculosis patient, Elena Milagro de Hoyos.

The lucky ticket was bought sometime Saturday or earlier at a Publix supermarket in Zephyrhills, a city of about 13,000 people best known around the state for its brand of spring water with the same name

In 1933, two years after her death, Tanzler removed the girl's body from its tomb and lived with the wax encased corpse at his home for seven years until its discovery by Hoyo's relatives in 1940.

Joan Albertson drove to the Publix early Sunday morning with her camera in hand, in case the winner emerged. She said she bought a ticket at a store across the street, and the idea of winning that much money was still something of a shock.

  More... Is a 26-year-old woman America's biggest ever single lottery winner? Tiny Florida town stunned after $590m Powerball jackpot ticket is traced to this store Record-breaking 128lb Python that measures 18ft and 8in long is captured and killed in Florida Woman who got all six Powerball numbers but bought her ticket an hour too late

'Oh, there's so much good that you could do with that amount of money.' said Albertson.

'I don't even know where to begin.'

Zephyrhills is a small city in Pasco County, about 30 miles northeast of downtown Tampa.

Dreamers: Dozens line up outside a liquor store in Hawthorne, Calif., to buy tickets before Saturday's draw

Once a rural farming town, it's now known as a hotbed for skydiving activity, and the home to large retiree mobile home parks and the water bottled from the natural springs that surround the area.

As news filtered through the town that the winner of the half-billion dollar jackpot hailed from Zephyrhills television crews descended.

'We don't expect anyone to come forward right away,' said David Bishop, deputy secretary of the Florida Lottery.

'The winner may not even know they have the winning ticket yet. And if they are smart, they are going to see an attorney and talk to an accountant first.'

And now, one lucky lottery ticket.

Estimates had earlier put the jackpot at around $600 million. But Powerball's online site said Sunday that the jackpot had reached an estimated $590.5 million.

And now in Zephyrhills, the rumor mill is going into overdrive as the townsfolk guess if the winner is one of the town's many retirees or a sky-diving enthusiast - of which there are many in the surrounding area.

The previous record for a Powerball jackpot was $587.5 million Nov. 28, 2012, and was split between two winning tickets.

Hefty ticket sales: The prize grew quickly in size because of the huge jackpot on offer

















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