It may already feel like Christmas for one lucky Illinois lottery player who just scored a $1 million jackpot from a "Merry Multiplier" scratch-off ticket sold at a Chicago food mart.
According to the Illinois Lottery, the $20 "Merry Multiplier" scratch-off ticket was sold at Super Shopper Food Mart, located at 1351 W. 79th Street on the city's South Side.
The ticket also carries with it a bonus of one percent of the prize amount -- or $10,000 -- for the store that sold it, lottery officials said.
More than 54 million winning Instant Tickets have been sold in Illinois in 2023, lottery officials said in a release. Earlier this month, a $3 million scratch off Instant Ticket was sold at a gas station in the tiny town of Woodhull. In September, jackpot-winning Instant tickets were sold in a handful of Chicago suburbs, including in Carpentersville, Wood Dale, and Morris.
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.”
According to lottery officials, there are more than 50 different Illinois Lottery Instant Ticket games at over 7,000 retail locations across Illinois.
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