Does Anybody Ever Win Big on Scratch Cards?

Yes. Real people win millions on scratch cards, and the lotteries publish their names, their stores, and their prizes. These aren't urban legends. A Massachusetts woman won $25 million on a single ticket in 2023. A Florida man won $25 million in 2025 and walked away with a $16 million lump sum. The wins are real, documented, and life-changing. They're also rare, and understanding both halves of that sentence is the key to thinking about scratch cards clearly.

The Biggest Documented Scratch Card Wins

The largest instant-win scratch card prize on record belongs to Desiree Fortini-Craft of Hyde Park, Massachusetts. According to Lottery USA, she won $25 million in 2023 from the Massachusetts Lottery's $50 Billion Dollar Extravaganza game, the biggest instant-win jackpot ever recorded.

In April 2025, Kyle Lindquist, 45, of Venice, Florida matched that figure. According to FOX 35 Orlando, Lindquist bought a $50 500X THE CASH ticket at a Circle K in Sarasota County and won the top prize of $25 million, the biggest jackpot ever offered on a Florida scratch-off game. He took the one-time lump sum of $16 million.

In California, Mary Higelin won $20 million on a Set for Life Millionaire Edition Scratchers ticket bought at CN Liquor in Norco. According to CBS News, she became just the fourth person in California Lottery history to win that game's top prize. That same week, three other Californians won big: Salvador Carbajal won $10 million on a 200X Scratchers, Roberto Nunes won $10 million on a Titanium Black ticket, and Nicholas Simpson won $2 million on an Instant Prize Crossword. Combined, the four winners tallied $42 million.

Wins Happen in Smaller States Too

Big scratch card wins aren't limited to the largest states. In May 2025, a South-Central Kentucky woman won $5 million on her birthday. According to WKYT, she bought a $50 $5,000,000 Fortune ticket at Grand Mart in Tompkinsville, scratched it in her car, and matched the number 46 to win the top prize. She took a lump sum of $3.4 million, receiving about $2.45 million after taxes. The store that sold the ticket earned a $34,000 bonus.

Texas has produced a steady run of multi-million-dollar scratch winners. According to NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth, multiple North Texans won $5 million each in a single year across games like $400 Million Mega Bucks, $5,000,000 Ultimate, and Luxe. The biggest scratch-off game Texas has offered, $20 Million Supreme, carried four grand prizes of $20 million each, three of which have been claimed.

The Part That Matters: How Rare This Is

Now the honest half. These winners are real, but they're the exception by an enormous margin. A game with a $25 million top prize typically prints tens of millions of tickets. When Mary Higelin became "just the fourth person" to win California's Set for Life top prize, that phrasing tells you everything: across the entire print run of that game, only four top prizes existed, and millions of tickets did not win them.

The odds of hitting a scratch card's top prize are typically in the range of 1 in 1 million to 1 in 5 million per ticket for the largest games. You are far more likely to win nothing, or to win back a few dollars, than to hit anything close to a life-changing amount. Every scratch card game is designed with a negative expected value, meaning the average player loses money over time. The big winners exist precisely because millions of other players didn't win.

This isn't a reason to never play. It's a reason to play with clear eyes. The person who buys a ticket understanding that the realistic outcome is entertainment and a small chance at a modest prize, with a vanishingly tiny shot at millions, is thinking about it correctly. The person who buys believing a big win is likely is setting themselves up for disappointment and worse.

What the Winners Have in Common

Looking across the documented big winners, a few patterns stand out, though none of them are strategies that improve your odds. Most of the largest wins came from higher-priced tickets. The $25 million Florida win was a $50 ticket. The $5 million Kentucky win was a $50 ticket. The $25 million Massachusetts win was from a high-priced game. This reflects a simple structural fact: the biggest top prizes are almost always on $30 and $50 games, because those games generate the revenue to fund large prize pools.

That doesn't mean buying expensive tickets makes you likely to win big. It means that if you're specifically hoping for a shot at a multi-million-dollar top prize, those prizes only exist on premium-priced games. A $1 or $5 ticket simply doesn't carry a $25 million top prize. The tradeoff is that premium tickets cost more per play.

The One Thing You Can Actually Control

You can't change your odds of hitting a top prize, but you can make sure the top prize still exists before you buy. Here's a scenario that happens constantly: a game with a $5 million top prize sells for months. Eventually all of its $5 million prizes get claimed. The game keeps selling at the same price with the same printed odds, but the top prize you'd be playing for is gone.

Checking remaining top prizes before you buy means you never pay for a jackpot that no longer exists. If a game shows zero top prizes remaining, the biggest win available is whatever the next prize tier down is. The state pages on ScratchCheck show remaining top prizes for every active game, so if your reason for playing is the shot at a big prize, you can confirm that shot is still on the table.

The Honest Bottom Line

Does anybody ever win big on scratch cards? Absolutely. Desiree Fortini-Craft, Kyle Lindquist, Mary Higelin, and a Kentucky woman on her birthday all did, and dozens more do every year across the country. The prizes are real and the lotteries pay them out.

Is it likely to be you? No. The math is clear that the overwhelming majority of players lose money, and the big winners are statistical rarities among tens of millions of tickets. The right way to play is to treat it as entertainment you can afford to lose, buy games with intact prize pools and good payout rates, and consider any win a genuine surprise rather than an expectation. For finding which games currently have the best odds, payout rates, and remaining top prizes in your state, the ValueScore rankings rank every active game by the numbers that matter.

Scratch-offs are designed to be a fun, low-cost form of entertainment. If playing ever stops feeling like entertainment, the National Problem Gambling Helpline is available 24/7 at 1-800-522-4700, free and confidential.