June 25, 2005 -- Christopher Ewen of Seymour made history on June 25 by winning Powerball’s $59,500,000 jackpot, the largest prize won in the CT Lottery’s 33-year history.  Ewen's winning Powerball Quick Pick numbers were: 7 – 28 – 31 – 32 – 40, with a Powerball #14.  The winning Powerball jackpot ticket was purchased at Shop Smart located at 43 New Haven Road in Seymour.

Today, Ewen and his family arrived in style at the CT Lottery’s New Britain headquarters in a limousine provided courtesy of Premier Limousine in Glastonbury.  Lottery employees were on hand to greet the winner, and congratulate Ewen on the historic win.  

Ewen sought professional legal and financial planning advice before making his final decision to select the “Cash Lump Sum” payment option, worth $34,662,300.   With both Federal and State withholdings removed from the prize, Ewen’s net prize remained significant, at $24,263,610.66.  For selling Ewen's winning Powerball ticket, Shop Smart of Seymour received a $100,000 bonus check from the CT Lottery.

The CT Lottery joined the Powerball game in 1995, and is one of 29 participants.  Since then, profits from the game have returned more than $328,000,000 to the state’s General Fund.  Additionally, Mr. Ewen’s win will add another $1.7 million to the state in withholding tax.

“We all win with Mr. Ewen’s prize,” noted CT Lottery CFO, John Ramadei.  “The Lottery is proud of the profit contributions made weekly to the General Fund as a result of ticket sales for Lottery games.   All residents of our state will benefit from this win, and we are equally pleased for Mr. Ewen and his good fortune.”  

There were a total of 16,940 winning tickets sold statewide for the June 25 drawing with prize values that ranged from $3 to $59,500,000 each. The overall odds of winning the jackpot prize in Powerball are 1 in 120,526,770.

Two Lottery employees, Lori Ann Motto and Maria Barone, were selected at random to present Mr. Ewen with his check.  Additionally, two other CT Lottery employees, Kevin Romanick and Diane Patterson, were selected in a random drawing held to sign the check Ewen received. 

Four Powerball Jackpot tickets have been sold in Connecticut since 1995:

06/25/05 Seymour - $59.5 million
06/25/97 New Britain - $8.0 million
05/07/97 Danbury - $36.4 million
01/04/97 Danbury - $10.4 million