Edwin Castro keeps $2.04 billion winnings as California judge dismisses Powerball lawsuit

Powerball winner Edwin Castro will hold on to his record-breaking $2.04 billion winnings after a California judge dismissed a lawsuit in which someone claimed the ticket was stolen from him.

A Los Angeles County judge tentatively dismissed Jose Rivera's lawsuit last month, but it became official on Tuesday after Rivera failed to appeal the ruling, TMZ said, citing court documents.

That means Castro will no longer have to fight to prove he is the rightful owner of the jackpot, the largest in U.S. history, nearly two years after he won it.

While Rivera claimed the ticket was stolen from him, the judge ruled that “players are solely responsible for protecting their tickets from theft, loss, damage or destruction.”

“The person in possession of a…winning lottery ticket…is the presumed owner/winner,” the judge wrote, according to TMZ.

Castro, 31, hit the life-changing jackpot in November 2022, opting for the lump sum payout of $997.7 million.

He took home about $628 million after taxes, according to the California Lottery.

Castro was sued by Rivera in 2023.

In court documents obtained by The Post at the time, Rivera claimed he purchased the winning ticket on Nov. 7, 2022 — just one day before the drawing.

But a man identified as Urachi “Reggie” Romero allegedly stole the ticket and “refused” to give it back, the complaint says.

Reggie reportedly told Rivera that the “ticket was a loser.”

It was unclear how the ticket came into Castro's possession.

After his windfall, Castro quickly spent $47 million on a Hollywood Hills mansion and also invested $4 million on a home for his parents in Altadena.

In July, he went public with his model girlfriend Payten Vincent, 24, in a series of popular social media posts.

The couple were first spotted together at Nobu in Los Angeles earlier this month.

According to LinkedIn, a self-proclaimed poet with 125,000 Instagram followers, Vincent worked as a barista at Starbucks in Falmouth, Maine, and as a teller at TD Bank before moving to LA.