The $1.586 Billion Split Three Ways

The January 13, 2016 Powerball drawing produced the then-largest U.S. jackpot ever: $1.586 billion, split among three winning tickets. The winners: John and Lisa Robinson of Tennessee, David Kaltschmidt and Maureen Smith of Florida, and Marvin and Mae Acosta of California. Each share was about $528.8 million before the cash-option reduction.

On the evening of January 13, 2016, three tickets matched all six numbers in the Powerball drawing — 4, 8, 19, 27, 34, and Powerball 10 — and split a jackpot of $1.586 billion, the largest lottery prize in American history at the time. The jackpot had started at $40 million on November 4, 2015, and rolled over almost thirty times as ticket sales surged and the prize climbed past a billion dollars, breaking the digital signs at some stores that had never been programmed to display a number that large. Each winning ticket was worth $528.8 million as an annuity, or $327.8 million as a lump-sum cash payment, before taxes.

The three winning tickets came from three very different corners of the country. In Munford, Tennessee, John and Lisa Robinson bought four Quick Pick tickets at Naifeh's Food Mart, one for each member of their family; one of them held all six numbers. In Melbourne Beach, Florida, David Kaltschmidt and Maureen Smith bought theirs at a Publix supermarket. And in Chino Hills, California, Marvin and Mae Acosta bought theirs at a 7-Eleven. The retailers shared in the moment too: Naifeh's received a $25,000 bonus for selling the winning ticket, while the 7-Eleven earned a $1 million commission.

All three couples chose the same thing when it came to the money itself. Each took the cash lump sum of $327.8 million before taxes rather than the annuity spread over thirty years, the bird-in-the-hand choice that most jackpot winners make. Federal withholding took a large bite immediately, and the winners' final tax bills depended on where they lived — Florida and Tennessee levy no state income tax on lottery winnings, and California does not tax lottery winnings either — but even after taxes, each household walked away with a sum in the low hundreds of millions.

What made the story memorable was not the money but the three very different ways the winners handled sudden fame. The Robinsons were first to come forward, flying to New York to appear on NBC's Today show just two days after the drawing — before they had even contacted the Tennessee Lottery. Kaltschmidt and Smith waited until February, then spoke modestly about working with charities and investing the prize. The Acostas took the opposite approach entirely: they waited six months, hired a team of lawyers and financial advisers, and claimed the prize in July 2016 with a brief statement asking for privacy. California law requires winners' names to be public record, so the Acostas could not stay anonymous, but they declined to have their photograph or video released at the California Lottery's press conference, and then largely vanished from public view.

The record the three couples set stood for more than six years. It was finally surpassed in November 2022, when Edwin Castro of Altadena, California, won a $2.04 billion Powerball jackpot as the sole ticket holder. The 2016 drawing remains the largest shared jackpot in the game's history, and a reminder of how the lottery's biggest prizes are built: not by one lucky ticket, but by weeks of rollovers, millions of hopeful players, and a jackpot figure so large it becomes a national event in itself.

The lesson of the split is the one the Acostas understood best. A windfall that size attracts attention, requests, and pressure in direct proportion to its size, and the winners who kept the most control over what came next were the ones who stayed quiet longest. The Robinsons' candour made them folk heroes for a week; the Acostas' six months of silence bought them something more durable — time to hire advisers, make a plan, and decide on their own terms what the money was for. Privacy, for a lottery winner, is not a luxury. It is a financial asset, and like any asset, it is worth most before it is spent.

The lesson: Privacy is a financial asset — the winners who stayed quiet longest kept the most control over what came next.

Source: original reporting · How we source stories