It may not have been a Golden Ticket tucked inside a candy bar -- but a jackpot-winning, golden scratch off ticket might be even sweeter.
A $400,000, "Gold Standard" Illinois Lottery Instant Ticket was recently sold at a suburban grocery store, lottery officials said. And while lottery players in Illinois who score lotto winnings of $200,000 or more can choose to remain anonymous, Mary of Wood Dale is celebrating her win publicly.
"When I scratched the instant ticket and saw $400,000, I was in total shock," Mary said in an Illinois Lottery press release. “My husband said my face turned white and my jaw dropped. We truly couldn’t believe it."
The scratch-off ticket was sold at Jewel-Osco in suburban Wood Dale, located at 343 W. Irving Park Road, lottery officials said.
"Luck can happen to anyone at any time – just like it happened to me," Mary continued.
According to the Illinois Lottery, nearly 47 million winning instant tickets have been sold in Illinois in 2023.
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Earlier this year, an NBC 5 Investigates report revealed that the Illinois Lottery continued to sell and promote many Instant Games even after the top prizes had been claimed. A spokesperson for the lottery told NBC Chicago that although retailers are notified once a ticket no longer has a top prize, the process can be time consuming.
"As the process involves physically removing hundreds of thousands to millions of tickets from our stores for a particular game, that process can take up to 1 to 3 months to complete," the spokesperson said. "We will continue to look for ways to make this process even better for our players and retailers.”
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According to lottery officials, there are more than 50 different Illinois Lottery Instant Ticket games at over 7,000 retail locations across Illinois.
