SAN JOSE (KCBS RADIO) – Many people are feeling lucky on Friday as the Mega Millions jackpot is now over $ 1 billion.
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Superstitious lotto players are now buying tickets in droves, and Bay Area residents are no exception.
At Ernie's Liquor on South White Road in San Jose, business has especially been booming.
Ernie's is the store that in 2018 sold one of three Mega Millions winning tickets for the record $1.5 billion.
A giant novelty check for the $550 million still hangs over the cash register.
"It'd be awesome to win," said Herbert Jenovez while at the store. But even if he doesn't, he still enjoys the experience. "It's fun."
Jenovez has bought five tickets already at the nearby 7-11. He and his co-workers decided to play now that the jackpot is $1.1 billion.
"At work, we started a work pool, 14 of us, we figured, throw in $10 and hopefully 14 of us become millionaires," he said.
If he wins, he'd like to pay off his parents' debt, his wife's parents' debt and buy a house in California.
The drawing will happen Friday night at 8 p.m. and right now the the odds of picking all six numbers correctly are one in over 302,000,000.
If someone has the winning ticket, this jackpot will be the second largest prize ever given out by Mega Millions, according to a release issued by the 20-year-old lottery game on Thursday.
The biggest prize ever was the $1.537 billion won on October 23, 2018, sold in South Carolina, and is the biggest lottery prize ever won in the world.
Mega Millions tickets are sold in 45 states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
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