Winners & News

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Prize ImageRonnie Lester was on his way home from work when he stopped at the Sheetz at 2053 Huguenot Road in Chesterfield County. The North Chesterfield man bought a Virginia Lottery ticket and scratched it, but it wasn’t a winning ticket. He was about to leave, but then he just happened to notice the Millionaire Maker Scratcher game.

“Something just told me to buy that ticket,” he later told Lottery officials.

When he scratched it, he saw something he’d never seen before. The ticket was a $1 million winner!

“At first it didn’t hit me,” he said. “I was shocked.”

He had the choice of taking the full $1 million in annual payments over 30 years or a one-time cash option of $601,684 before taxes. He chose the cash option. The store receives a $10,000 bonus from the Virginia Lottery for selling the winning ticket.

Because Virginia Lottery customer service centers are currently closed due to the state of emergency in Virginia, Mr. Lester instead mailed his ticket to the Lottery’s claims service. Any Virginia Lottery player with a winning ticket can mail the ticket to the address on the back of the ticket.

Mr. Lester said he intends to save his winnings for retirement.

Millionaire Maker (game #2023) features prizes ranging from $30 to $1,000,000. The odds of winning that top prize are 1 in 244,800, while the odds of winning any prize in this game are 1 in 2.78. This is the fifth $1 million top prize claimed in this game, which means five more remain unclaimed.

The Virginia Lottery is good fun for a great cause. Mr. Lester lives in Chesterfield County, which received more than $25 million in Lottery funds for K-12 public education last fiscal year. For more information and a complete list of Lottery funds distributed to Virginia school districts, visit the Virginia Lottery’s Giving Back page.

The Virginia Lottery generates more than $1.7 million per day for Virginia’s K-12 public schools. Operating entirely on revenue from the sale of Lottery products, the Lottery generated a record $650 million for Virginia’s public schools in Fiscal Year 2019. An additional $6.5 million in unclaimed prizes was deposited in the Virginia Literary Fund in FY19, which provides low-interest loans to localities for public school construction, renovations and technology upgrades. For more info, visit our website, download our app, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Instagram, and check us out on YouTube.

Please play responsibly.