Van Buren County woman wins $1 million on a Bonus Multiplier ticket she left unscratched overnight

A 61-year-old Van Buren County woman won $1 million on a Michigan Lottery Bonus Multiplier ticket she bought while picking up groceries, then left sitting on her table until the following afternoon.

“I saw it laying there the next afternoon and sat down to scratch it off,” said the winner, who chose to remain anonymous. When she saw the amount, she said, she started screaming and told her husband they had to go downtown to get the ticket checked.

She bought the $10 ticket at the Meijer at 7300 Eastman Avenue in Midland, the lottery said. On the scratched ticket, the number 28 in Game 1 matches one of the winning numbers, with $1MIL printed under it. She recently claimed the prize at lottery headquarters and took a one-time payment of about $693,000 in place of the full $1 million paid over time. After the required 24% federal and 4.25% Michigan withholding, that comes to about $497,000. She plans to put the money toward home improvements and a savings account for each of her grandchildren.

Bonus Multiplier went on sale in August. The lottery printed three $1 million prizes, and two are still out there, along with 36 of the 40 prizes of $10,000 and 184 of the 205 prizes of $2,000. About $39 million in prizes has yet to be won. Going by the game's overall odds of 1 in 3.85, the print run is about 6.1 million tickets, so the top-prize odds started near 1 in 2 million. With about 15% of tickets sold, a ticket bought now has about a 1 in 2.6 million chance at one of the last two.

The game pays back 76.5% of sales as prizes, a little above the 76.3% average for Michigan's 26 active $10 games, and it rates 74.6 on our ValueScore™, third among them. The rest of the state's games are ranked on the Michigan ValueScore™ list. Another recent Michigan $1 million winner bought a Ruby 7s ticket in Rochester.

Sources

Michigan Lottery Connect: Van Buren County woman wins $1 million playing Bonus Multiplier