$1 Million Scratch Card Winner

John Martin, from Moscow, Texas, has won a cool $1 million by landing the top prize in the Cool Millions scratch-card game run by the Texas Lottery.

Although it costs more than the average scratch game at $20 a ticket, Cool Millions is very popular. When launched it offered over $56.9 million in prizes, including 1,208 prizes of $1,000, 76 prizes of $10,000 and 4 prizes of $1,000,000. The lowest amount of money that can be won is $20, which effectively gives the player their money back. The overall odds of winning any prize playing Cool Millions are 1 in 2.45.

John is the third person to claim the top prize of $1 million, which is paid out as a single lump sum. Although he requested minimal publicity and has therefore made no official statement of his own, the executive director of the Texas Lottery, Anthony J. Sadberry, was keen to offer a personal message to the lucky winner:

“On behalf of the Texas Lottery, I want to congratulate Mr. Martin,” Mr Sadberry said. “There’s still one $1 million Cool Millions top prize unclaimed, along with thousands of lower-tier prizes, so there’s no reason to stop playing just yet!”

The owner of the store which sold John the winning ticket also receives a bonus of $10,000 from the Texas Lottery.

Article Last Updated: 02/08/2007