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.
Local
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.”
Feeling out of the loop? We'll catch you up on the Chicago news you need to know. Sign up for the weekly Chicago Catch-Up newsletter.
According to lottery officials, there are more than 50 different Illinois Lottery Instant Ticket games at over 7,000 retail locations across Illinois.
