Can You Remain Anonymous After Winning a Lottery Prize?

If you win a significant lottery prize, your first instinct might be to keep it quiet. That instinct is well-founded. Large lottery winners have been targeted for theft, fraud, and harassment after their names became public. Some have been murdered. The question of whether you can remain anonymous isn't just about personal preference. It has real safety implications for large winners, and the answer depends entirely on which state issued your ticket.

The landscape has changed significantly last year in 2025. A wave of new legislation passed or advanced in several states that previously required disclosure, and the overall picture is more winner-friendly than it was even two years ago. Here's the current state-by-state breakdown.

States Where You Can Remain Fully Anonymous

A core group of states allow winners to keep their names out of public records entirely, regardless of prize size. These are the states where the most privacy protection exists by law:

Delaware: Full anonymity regardless of prize size. No threshold requirement.

Kansas: Winners can request to remain anonymous. The lottery honors those requests. Notably, Kansas was one of the two jackpot states in the April 29, 2026 Powerball drawing, and the Kansas Lottery specifically declined to release the retailer location, consistent with their broader privacy posture.

Maryland: In most cases, winners can remain anonymous. The lottery does not automatically disclose names.

Mississippi: The lottery will not identify a winner without their written consent. Default is privacy.

Missouri: Name is only released if the winner gives written consent. Opt-in disclosure rather than opt-out.

Montana: Name is not released, though location information may still be published.

New Jersey: Winners can choose to remain anonymous. The lottery does not require disclosure.

North Dakota: Winners have the option to remain anonymous.

South Carolina: Full anonymity available despite legislative efforts to change this in recent sessions.

Wyoming: Winners can remain anonymous or grant the lottery permission to share information. Default is privacy.

States That Added or Strengthened Anonymity in 2025

2025 was an active year for lottery privacy legislation. Several states that previously required disclosure or had no protections moved to protect winners.

Virginia: Governor signed House Bill 1799 on March 18, 2025. Winners of $1 million or more can now claim anonymously. The Virginia Lottery is prohibited from releasing names or hometowns for prizes at or above that threshold without the winner's consent.

New Hampshire: Governor Kelly Ayotte signed House Bill 485 on August 1, 2025, effective September 30, 2025. The law provides limited anonymity: winners can request confidentiality if they are victims of domestic violence, hold an active restraining order, or obtain a court order for good cause. It's narrower than full anonymity but a meaningful protection for vulnerable winners.

Maine: Signed into law on May 16, 2025. Anyone winning $100,000 or more is automatically protected. The Bureau of Alcoholic Beverages and Lottery Operations can only share winner information with state agencies as required by law, and those agencies are prohibited from further disclosure. Maine also extended protections to participants in the state's Address Confidentiality Program regardless of prize size.

Kentucky: House Bill 46 allows winners of over $1 million to keep names and likenesses confidential for up to one year. Winners can waive this protection voluntarily. The bill passed the House 95-0 and advanced through the Senate in early 2025. The retailer location where the ticket was sold remains public.

Pennsylvania: Senate Bill 73, which would protect personal information for winners of $100,000 or more, advanced through committee in June 2025 and cleared Appropriations in October 2025. As of early 2026, full passage was pending. City, county, and prize amount would remain public under the bill, but names and addresses would be protected.

New York: Senate Bill S2613, which would bar the State Division of the Lottery from disclosing winner names or addresses without consent, passed the Senate in February 2025 and was referred to the Assembly Ways and Means Committee. As of early 2026 it had not yet been signed into law, meaning New York winners still face public disclosure requirements under current rules.

States With Threshold-Based or Partial Anonymity

A number of states offer anonymity only above a certain prize amount, for a limited time period, or under specific conditions.

Texas: Winners of more than $1 million can remain anonymous. Below that threshold, names are public record.

West Virginia: Same $1 million threshold as Texas for anonymity protection.

Illinois: Winners of $250,000 or more can request confidentiality for their name and hometown.

Minnesota: Winners of more than $10,000 can opt to remain anonymous. Those winning $10,000 or less cannot.

Michigan: Winners of more than $10,000 in state-run games can stay anonymous. For multi-state games like Powerball and Mega Millions, Michigan defers to those games' rules, which allow public disclosure of winners.

Florida: Winners of $250,000 or more are exempt from public disclosure for 90 days after claiming. After that window, names may be released. Winners can also claim any prize anonymously through a trust, in which case the trustee's name or attorney's name is published rather than the winner's personal name.

Arizona: Winners of $100,000 or more can remain anonymous for 90 days from the date funds are received. After that period, the city and county of residence may be released, but the name remains confidential permanently.

Arkansas: Winners of $500,000 or more can remain anonymous for three years.

North Carolina: Most winners are subject to disclosure. Winners of $50 million or more can remain anonymous for 90 days after claiming. Below that, public records apply for prizes above $600.

States That Require Public Disclosure

In roughly half the states with lotteries, winner information is public record and disclosure is mandatory. These states include:

California: The winner's full name and the location where the ticket was purchased must be disclosed. This is why the identity of the winner of the $2.04 billion Powerball jackpot in 2022 became public quickly. The ticket was sold in California and disclosure was legally required.

New York (current law, pending legislation): Name, hometown, prize amount, and ticket purchase location are public record. NYC winners specifically have no anonymity protection under current rules.

Colorado: First name, first initial of last name, hometown, prize amount, and game played are posted publicly on the Colorado Lottery website.

Georgia, Wisconsin, South Dakota, Vermont: Name and hometown are made public. Wisconsin makes this information available to any organization or individual who requests it.

New Mexico, Idaho: Public records laws require disclosure of name, city of residence, prize amount, and other identifying details upon request.

Iowa: The Iowa Lottery states explicitly that it is impossible for winners to remain anonymous when claiming prizes.

Louisiana: The state lottery warns that depending on the amount won and public interest, winners may not be able to remain anonymous.

Tennessee: Name, home state, and hometown are obtainable through a public records request.

The Trust and LLC Workaround

Even in states that require public disclosure, many winners use a legal workaround: claiming the prize through a trust or LLC rather than in their personal name. When a trust claims the prize, the trust's name appears in public records rather than the individual winner's name. A trust named "Lucky Stars LLC" or "2026 Family Trust" discloses nothing about who actually holds the winning ticket.

This approach works in many states including Ohio, Colorado, Connecticut, Vermont, and New York, though effectiveness varies. In New York, even a trust claim doesn't guarantee complete anonymity since courts have sometimes ordered disclosure when challenged. California's disclosure laws are stricter and may require identifying the actual winner regardless of claim vehicle.

Setting up a trust before claiming requires an attorney and takes time. If you win a significant prize, do not claim immediately. Sign the back of the ticket, secure it, and consult an attorney before taking any steps toward claiming. The claim deadline gives you weeks or months to do this properly. The trust setup typically costs a few thousand dollars in legal fees, a trivial amount relative to any prize worth protecting.

Why States Require Disclosure at All

The argument for mandatory disclosure is that public accountability prevents fraud. If lottery winners are identified, it's harder to run a rigged lottery where employees or insiders claim prizes. Transparency also serves as proof that real people win, which supports public trust in the lottery system. Several states cite this rationale explicitly in their public records statutes.

The counterargument has become more compelling as documented cases of winners being targeted have mounted. Lottery winners have been robbed, defrauded by financial predators, stalked, and in some cases killed after their identities became public. The 2025 wave of anonymity legislation was largely driven by specific incidents that received national attention, and the trend toward more protection appears likely to continue.

For scratch-off players specifically, most prizes fall below the disclosure thresholds even in disclosure-required states. A $10,000 win in Georgia or North Carolina is technically public record but practically unlikely to attract media attention. The anonymity question matters most for top prizes in the five-figure range and above, where identifying information becomes genuinely sensitive.

For current scratch-off rankings and top prize availability in your state, ScratchCheck's state pages cover active games across all states that publish data. If you're tracking which games still have significant prizes remaining, those rankings update from official lottery sources.