LINCOLN PARK, Mich. — A Michigan woman who continued to get food stamps after winning a lottery jackpot was arraigned Tuesday on welfare fraud charges.

Amanda Clayton, 25, of Lincoln Park was arrested on Monday. If convicted of the two felony charges, she could face up to four years in prison.

Clayton stood silently during her arraignment at Lincoln Park’s 25th District Court. Defense lawyer Stanley Wise said he hopes to have charges dismissed at her next court hearing April 24. He didn’t elaborate.

“She’s upset but she’ll be fine,” Wise said.

(CNN) — Someone in Maryland is about to have a wildly euphoric weekend.

A winning ticket for the record-breaking $640 million Mega Millions jackpot was sold in Baltimore County, the Maryland Lottery said Saturday.

Lottery officials are waiting for information on potential jackpot winners from other Mega Millions states.

The winning numbers in the Mega Millions lottery Friday night were 2, 4, 23, 38, 46 with a Mega Ball of 23.

California Lottery Commission spokesman Alex Traverso said 29 tickets sold in that state matched five of the six winning numbers. He said the payout will be about $125,000 to $130,000.

(CNN) — Amanda Clayton hit it big playing the Michigan Lottery. Like many winners, she used her $1 million prize to buy a new house.

But the Lincoln Park, Michigan, resident is receiving money in another form — $200 a month in state food assistance, according to CNN Detroit affiliate WDIV.

“I thought that they would cut me off, but since they didn’t, I thought, maybe, it was OK because I’m not working,” Clayton, 24, told WDIV when it asked whether it was appropriate for her to receive the money.

Now a state lawmaker is trying to stop such assistance, which is not illegal. He says the food assistance should not go to those who have found riches through the lottery.

When the price of Powerball lottery tickets increases from $1 to $2 on Jan. 15, Chris Taranto says, he will still buy them.

So will a lot of other lottery players, he told phillyburbs.com. And their chances of winning will improve.

“People like to dream in this country,” the Delran, N.J., resident said as he purchased tickets for the Powerball and Mega Millions lotteries at the Hartford Deli on Tuesday. “The only true dream left is the lottery.”

With the price increase, the Powerball jackpot will grow from a minimum of $20 million to $40 million, and that could grow to the hundreds of millions if it takes several weeks to get a winner.

Winning the $200,000 PowerBall prize will enable Donny Jones to pay off his bills, but the Idaho native won’t be leaving his cooking job anytime soon, CBS3Springfield.com reports.

“I love my job,” Donny Jones told the news outlet. “I love my bosses and everybody I work with here.”

Jones lives with a disability and has been working at the Hometown Kitchen in Idaho Falls for 16 years, where he first started out as a dishwasher. He says he considers his co-workers family and knows that they’ll help him manage his winnings.

“I was in shock,” Donny Jones told the news outlet. “I’m still in shock.”

A Long Island man’s faith in God has been restored after he prayed for his mother to win the lottery and, the next day, she did.

Sal Bentivegna jokingly issued a prayer for his mother, Gloria, to win the lottery after she lost money playing slots in Atlantic City.

“He said ‘I’ll tell you what Ma, if there’s a God or Jesus up there, I’m asking him, please let my mother win,’” Gloria Bentivegna said.

The chance of winning the lottery is often said to be a tad bit smaller than the chance of being hit by lightning.

Lightning is said never to strike twice at the same place.

So consider the odds of someone winning the lotter. Twice. On the same day. From the same lottery.

That’s what happened to James McAllister (62) from Acworth, USA, when he bought two scratch off tickets on Valentine’s day.

James brought his wife for a Valentine’s breakfast. Along Highway 92 he bought a Georgia Lottery Millionaire Jumbo Bucks scratch off ticket — and won $5,000.

(CNN) — She was a mother of three living in a small apartment and working four jobs. And then, as if in a fairy tale, she won her state’s lottery last year. But the story doesn’t have the happy ending you might expect.

She didn’t do anything overly extravagant after the $1.3 million got slashed in taxes. She bought a house, got a new wardrobe at the Salvation Army, cut work down to just one job and invested the rest.

And then came the phone calls: promises, marriage proposals, accusations, threats. People who used to volunteer to help her do things wanted money for their trouble. Family members, she says, tried to run her life, and control her money.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – A Missouri man who won a $258 million Powerball jackpot says he hasn’t decided yet if he’ll quit his job at the convenience store where he bought the winning ticket.

Chris Shaw — a 29-year-old tattooed father of three who was raised by his grandparents in rural southern Missouri — came forward Thursday as the winner of the 10th-largest Powerball jackpot ever.

PIERRE, S.D. – It has the makings of a Hollywood script: A young rancher struggling to eke out a living in one of the poorest corners of the nation claims one of the biggest undivided jackpots in U.S. lottery history — $232 million — after buying the ticket in a town called Winner.

As he sported a black cowboy hat and a huge grin, 23-year-old Neal Wanless accepted his giant-sized Powerball check at a ceremony Friday.

Wanless, who is single and lives with his mother and father on the family’s 320-acre ranch near Mission, said he’s going to buy himself a bigger spread, repay the kindness other townspeople have shown his family and spend his newfound fortune wisely.