Mega Millions jackpot $370 million

Mega Millions jackpot $370 million

	Published : Tue, 06 Mar 2007 22:56 By : Agencies Print this Story

NEW YORK (AP) - AP Video

Lottery players dreaming of bursting bank accounts and permanent vacations on sunwashed islands lined up at stores around the country Tuesday in hopes of hitting the record $370 million Mega Millions jackpot.

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 the 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 Times Square.

'This is the capital of the world,' McLaughlin said at a news conference in a Times Square pizzeria.

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.

The odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot are about 1 in 176 million.

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.

Ron Thomas, who owns a nearby restaurant, stopped in for two tickets, saying: 'You can always hope.'

At a Los Angeles convenience store, maps specialist Rikki Bilder went in on 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.

Associated Press Writers Lisa Cornwell in Cincinnati, Ohio, Larry O'Dell in Richmond, Va., and Solvej Schou in Los Angeles contributed to this story.