Queens Couple Wins $250,000 on Mega Millions Free Play

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Winners Shanieka Chestnutt and James Jean-Charles

SCHENECTADY, NY (01/05/2011)(readMedia)--

Lottery winners James Jean-Charles, 37, and Shanieka Chestnutt, 34, of Laurelton, Queens checked their ticket three times before they could believe their $250,000 second place Mega Millions win was real. The couple's quarter of a million dollar windfall came to them by way of a New York Lottery promotion. "We bought a $10 Quick Pick ticket to get a couple of Free Play tickets and one of the Free Plays was the winner," explained Chestnutt.

The lucky pair held one of the eleven second-place prizes won in New York for the January 4th Mega Millions drawing. They matched the five numbers drawn, missing the $380,000,000 jackpot by just one number - the Mega Ball.

"We watched the numbers drawn, then we checked at the store, and then we checked online. Then we lost it," said Chestnutt at the Lottery's Garden City Customer Service Center where they claimed their prize today.

"We started playing when the jackpot started getting big," said Jean-Charles, an MTA bus operator. Jean-Charles and Chestnutt are parents to two daughters and have clear plans for their prize money, "Pay bills."

Mega Millions is a multi-state lottery game with drawings on Tuesdays and Fridays. The odds of winning a second place are 1 in 3,904,701. The overall odds of winning any Mega Millions prize on a $1 play are 1 in 39.89.

The New York Lottery continues to be North America's largest and most profitable Lottery, earning more than $39.3 billion in education support statewide since its founding over 40 years ago. The Lottery contributed nearly $2.67 billion in fiscal year 2009-2010 to help support education in New York State, which was over 12 percent of total state education funding to local school districts.

Lottery revenue is distributed to local school districts by the same statutory formula used to distribute other state aid to education. It takes into account both a school district's size and its income level; larger, lower-income school districts receive proportionately larger shares of Lottery school funding.

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