A fortunate Fort Worth resident recently received a fantastic surprise when they discovered the scratch-off lottery ticket they had recently purchased was worth $1 million.
The winning ticket came from the appropriately-named “Instant Millionaire” game, one of nearly 100 scratch-off games currently offered by the state.
According to NBC Dallas-Fort Worth, the winning ticket was purchased at the RaceTrac gas station located at 140 Eastchase Parkway in Fort Worth.
The winner has elected to remain anonymous at this time.
House Bill 59, which was passed by the legislature several years ago, and Texas Lottery Commission Rule §401.324 allow lottery winners whose prize exceeds $1 million to remain anonymous, Texas Lottery said. According to Lottery-guy.com, these rules make Texas one of only 17 states that allow winners the option to do so.
The cost of an Instant Millionaire ticket is $20 each. The lowest-priced scratch-offs cost $1, and the most expensive are $50 each.
According to the Texas State Lottery website, the odds of winning any prize from an Instant Millionaire ticket are 1 in 3.20. Any given ticket can contain between zero and 22 prizes ranging from $20 to $2.5 million.
The total amount of prize money available from the game is $519 million out of over 34 million tickets sold across the state. The announcement of the large prize comes just two weeks shy of the 30th anniversary of the state’s lottery program.
The first official lottery ticket in Texas was sold to then-Governor Ann Richards on May 29th, 1992.
According to a post on Texas Lottery’s website written by Commissioner Gary Grief, $8 billion worth of tickets were sold during the fiscal year for 2021, which ran from September 1, 2020, to August 31, 2021.
In that time, roughly $5.5 billion was given back to winners as prize money. Of that remaining $2 billion, approximately $1.97 billion went to the state’s education system.
The rest of the state’s lottery revenue, around $23.4 million, went to the state’s Fund for Veteran Assistance.