RALEIGH – Travis Craft of Cornelius is the most recent North Carolina Powerball player to win $1 million playing the game. His ticket for the June 9 drawing matched all five white balls to win the prize. Craft purchased his winning ticket, worth $680,000 after taxes, at the Kangaroo Express on Copperfield Boulevard in Concord.

Powerball prizes range from $4 to $40,000 to multimillion dollar jackpots. Before the game’s update in mid-January, the amount won for matching all five white balls but not the Powerball was $200,000. Today, a player who matches all five white balls and adds the $1 Power Play feature wins $2 million.

“A big reason the Powerball game was changed was to provide bigger prizes,” said Alice Garland, the lottery’s executive director. “The $1 million and $2 million prizes for matching five white balls are a great example of how the game has been improved.”

The jackpot for Wednesday’s Powerball drawing is estimated at $240 million if taken as an annuity or $159.7 million if taken as a lump sum. Three North Carolina Powerball players have won jackpots ranging from $74.5 million to $141.4 million. The odds of matching all six numbers are approximately 1 in 176 million.

Since the lottery began through June 30, 2011, Mecklenburg County education programs received more than $167.3 million in lottery funds. By law, those funds pay for teachers’ salaries in grades K-3, school construction, prekindergarten programs for at-risk four-year-olds, and need-based college scholarships and financial aid. To date, the N.C. Education Lottery has raised more than $2.35 billion for these initiatives statewide.