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A ticket sold in Illinois matched all six winning numbers in Wednesday's Powerball drawing to claim the $1.040 billion jackpot. The grand prize has an estimated cash value of $450.5 million and ranks as the eighth-largest Powerball jackpot ever won, according to Powerball. The largest lottery jackpot in U.S. history was won on Nov. 7, 2022, when a ticket sold in California claimed a $2.04 billion Powerball prize. A $1.817 billion Powerball jackpot won on Christmas Eve ranks as the second-largest prize in U.S. lottery history.

Taylor Fresh Foods has filed a federal lawsuit accusing the former president of its Tennessee subsidiary, his wife and two others of orchestrating a yearslong fraud scheme that allegedly stole more than $32 million from the company. Taylor Fresh Foods filed the federal lawsuit at the beginning of June, 2026, accusing the former president of its Tennessee subsidiary, his wife and two others of orchestrating a yearslong fraud scheme that allegedly stole more than $32 million from the company. According to the complaint, Brian Thure served as president of Taylor Farms Tennessee from about 2012 until March 2026 and allegedly...

Quarterback Brendan Sorsby will not play in the NFL in 2026, as the league has elected not to hold a supplemental draft. The NFL's decision came down to its right to decide whether to hold a supplemental draft, per the collective bargaining agreement, as league officials said they believed it would ultimately become a distraction to teams as they begin training camps. "His application carries with it a lot of issues," an NFL source told ESPN. "Core of the game integrity issues." Sorsby admitted to betting thousands of times on college and pro sports, bets that totaled upward of $90,000...

For the first time in nearly 70 years, children and teenagers in South Carolina can legally play pinball. A law the governor signed last month removed the arcade game from the list of so-called status offenses outlawed for anyone under the age of 18, following a decade-long effort. The original ban was never enforced, but it remained a source of anxiety for law-abiding business owners, supporters of the bill said. Pinball gained popularity during the Great Depression as cheap, accessible entertainment — which critics called unskilled gambling tied to crime. Players released a ball that bounced into holes with different...

Los Angeles voters are heading to the polls Tuesday to elect their next mayor, a race that has put all eyes on the nation's second-largest city. But if no one reaches more than 50% of the vote after all the ballots are counted, the top-two vote getters will head to a November runoff. Traders on prediction market platform Kalshi think the incumbent Mayor Karen Bass and insurgent former reality TV star Spencer Pratt are most likely to advance to the second round. Traders are fairly certain Bass will make it to the second round, giving her 93% odds. Bass has...

Kim Freudenberg, a longtime teacher in San Francisco, knew that raising two boys meant a lot of hard conversations. She warned them about all the usual dangers: drugs, alcohol, sex, social media, riding a bike without a helmet. "Never once did I even think that I needed to say 'gambling,'" she recalls. One day, when her oldest son was 11, he was watching someone play video games on a livestream and clicked on a link in the comments. It took him to an offshore online casino. There, he got sucked in — to blackjack, poker, roulette. He could use items...

The Gambling Legend That Was Nick the Greek. Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain “Nick the Greek” will forever be remembered as one of the most famous legends of gambling in the United States. On Christmas Eve 1966, “Nick the Greek” took his last breath, leaving behind an almost-mythical life spent as the high-stakes “Gentleman of gambling.” Many Greeks have made history in the United States, but Nick Dandolos is one of few who is remembered the most. Frank Sinatra and Aristotle Onassis were two of his biggest fans. The story of Nick the Greek is the stuff that old Hollywood movies...

The Indianapolis Colts have taken the first step in ensuring that impending free agent quarterback Daniel Jones sticks around, placing the seldom-used transition tag on the veteran. The tag guarantees the Colts the right of first refusal for Jones, preserving the right to match any competing offer sheet he might sign with an interested club. The news comes ahead of Tuesday's deadline to assess franchise or transition tags on players who are scheduled to hit free agency next week. If Jones does not sign a competing offer sheet, he would earn a one-year guaranteed salary of $37.833 million. Colts general...

New York's attorney general sued Valve, a video game developer whose franchises include Counter-Strike, Team Fortress and Dota, accusing it of promoting illegal gambling and threatening to addict children through its use of "loot boxes." In a complaint filed on Wednesday in a state court in Manhattan, Attorney General Letitia James said Valve's loot boxes amounted to "quintessential gambling," violating the state's constitution and penal law, with valuable items often hard to win and many items worth pennies. Valve, based in Bellevue, Washington, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Loot boxes let players use real money to buy...

After losing another massive Super Bowl bet, Drake has decided to stay away from sports gambling. The Canadian rapper wrote on his Instagram that he's "off sports betting" and is instead "sticking to what" he knows, accompanied by a video of him playing online roulette. Ahead of Sunday's Super Bowl, Drake revealed that he placed a $1 million bet on the New England Patriots to beat the Seattle Seahawks. "Bet against me if you dare," he wrote on Instagram (h/t People's Clare Fisher), seemingly playing into the "Drake Curse." Had the Patriots won, Drake would have taken home about $2.95...

The news in October that stars and coaches from America’s National Basketball Association, the NBA, were allegedly involved in a $7 million illegal gambling operation — involving what prosecutors described as “x-ray poker tables” and “sunglasses to read the backs of playing cards” — was all the more alarming for who their co-conspirators were said to be. More than 30 people were arrested in a sweeping FBI investigation, among them members of an organisation as infamous as the NBA is famous, and one that many believed had long faded from view: La Cosa Nostra, the Italian-American mafia. “New York City’s...

A Chinese court has sentenced to death 11 members of a notorious family that ran scam centres in Myanmar, according to Chinese state media. Dozens of members of the Ming family were found guilty of conducting criminal activities, with many receiving lengthy jail sentences. The Ming family worked for one of the four clans that ran Myanmar's sleepy backwater town of Laukkai, close to the border with China, and turned it into a hub for gambling, drugs and scam centres. Myanmar eventually cracked down, arresting many members of these families in 2023 and handing them over to Chinese authorities. A...

China has executed 11 members of a notorious Myanmar mafia family that was infamous for duping victims in fake online romances. The Ming crime family was sentenced to death in September by a court in the eastern Chinese city of Wenzhou, with the same court also carrying out the executions on Thursday. Residents in the UK and the US have fallen victim to similar, sophisticated schemes, after being lured into romantic relationships that resulted in the loss of large amounts of cash. The clan members were executed for crimes including 'intentional homicide, intentional injury, unlawful detention, fraud and casino establishment',...

A college basketball point-shaving scheme involving more than 39 players on 17 NCAA Division I teams resulted in dozens of games in the previous two seasons being fixed by a gambling ring that included a former NBA player, according to a federal indictment unsealed Thursday in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Twenty of the 26 defendants played college basketball during the 2023-24 and/or 2024-25 seasons, according to the indictment. Four of the players charged -- Simeon Cottle, Carlos Hart, Camian Shell and Oumar Koureissi -- have played for their current teams in the past week.

I’m absolutely flabbergasted, and you will be too. So, before I started writing for the day, I was looking for value in sports bets just to get a few in before the evening grind. One of the ways that I do this is by scrolling down my Twitter timeline, scanning for numbers and seeing if anything pops. From there, I get all scientific with it, but that’s another story for another day. I want to tell you what I came across while doing this, and it will absolutely blow your mind. (I actually took a break from looking for bets...

CNN has opened up a Pandora’s box that’s worse than any fake news hoax the outlet could ever possibly peddle. On Tuesday, the network announced an “official partnership” with the online platform Kalshi, which allows users to wager on anything from a sports game to whether J.D. Vance will be the GOP nominee in 2028, to how much money Darth Vader’s lightsaber will fetch at auction. Kalshi is a “prediction market,” and users are trading “contracts” on future events. So, somehow, it is legally distinct from gambling. “As part of the partnership, CNN will get access to Kalshi’s data through...

Gamblers will soon be able to roll the dice in New York City. A state board on Monday awarded three licenses to operate the first Vegas-style casinos in New York City that are expected to generate billions of dollars in tax revenues, jobs and economic activity — two in Queens and one nearby in The Bronx. The New York Gaming Facility Location Board, in a 5-0 vote, approved licenses to all three finalists: Mets owner Steve Cohen and Hard Rock’s Metropolitan Park gaming complex near Citi Field. The Genting Group Resorts World’s slots parlor’s expansion to offer table games next...

A court in Vietnam handed jail sentences on Wednesday (Nov 12) to two former local officials who wagered millions of dollars under false foreign names, in a closely-watched gambling trial, state media reported. The pair were part of an illegal gambling ring run by South Koreans out of a swanky Hanoi hotel and comprising more than 140 people, prosecutors had alleged. The outfit was said to include former government and communist party officials, entertainers and businesspeople who placed bets totalling more than US$106 million. The slot, roulette and baccarat machines at the gilded King Club in the capital's five-star Pullman...

NEW YORK (AP) — Two Major League Baseball pitchers were indicted Sunday on charges they took bribes to give sports bettors advance notice of the types of pitches they’d throw and intentionally tossed balls instead of strikes to ensure successful bets. Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz, both of whom pitched for the Cleveland Guardians, have been on non-disciplinary paid leave since July while Major League Baseball investigated unusually high in-game betting activity when they pitched. Clase, 27, and Ortiz, 26, were both charged with wire fraud conspiracy, honest services wire fraud conspiracy, conspiracy to influence sporting contests by bribery and...

Tucker Carlson has crossed the line, but is he taking conservatives with him?...