Solana Beach lotto winner comes forward

The person with three winning lottery tickets, worth $204,482, all purchased in Solana Beach, came forward Thursday, NBC News reported. The winner remains anonymous.

In all, five identical Mega Millions lottery tickets were sold for the April 30 drawing. Three of those were sold in one place: the Qwik Korner Deli & Grocery in Solana Beach.

Lottery officials told NBC News that it’s not uncommon for the same person to claim a prize with duplicate tickets. Players will use the advance draw system and sometimes forget that they’ve already played, the spokesperson said. That can result in overlapping weeks.

However, the officials said three duplicate tickets were a little unusual.

The owner of the family-run store, Danny Yaldo, told NBC that he wouldn’t get any money from the three winning tickets sold at his store. He would receive 0.5 percent of the winnings only if all six numbers were chosen correctly. Still, his reputation as being a “lucky” store has been attracting business.

On Thursday, another local Mega Millions lottery ticket winner came forward to claim his $23 million jackpot.

The winning ticket was sold at Vons Grocery on Mission Gorge Road in Santee. The winning numbers were 8, 7, 15, 11, 31 and the Mega number 27.

The two other winning Mega Millions tickets were sold in California, too: One was bought in Garden Grove and another was purchased in the Sierra foothill town of La Grange.