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One person from Illinois wins the $1.34 billion Mega Millions jackpot.
The winner of the $1.337 billion Mega Millions jackpot might never be found out. This is possible because of an Illinois law that lets people who win more than $250,000 keep their names secret.
Lottery officials have said that the winning ticket was sold at the Speedy Cafe Speedway gas station in Des Plaines.
No one has yet come forward to claim the huge prize, and lotto officials say they don't even know if the winner was a single person or a group of people.
Illinois is one of only a few states that lets people who win the lottery choose to stay anonymous.
Some other states, like New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, and Wyoming, offer some kind of anonymity when playing the lottery, according to a list put together by Fox News.
But the website for the New York lottery says that winners should expect to be asked to attend a public announcement or press event.
“The New York Lottery is a government agency and Lottery prizes are public funds, so we owe it to all our players to disclose the names of winners,” the site says.
Still, the idea of making lotteries anonymous has grown in popularity in recent years. In New York, the state legislature passed a bill in 2019 that would have done this, but then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo vetoed it.
In his 2019 veto message, Cuomo told winners who want to try to hide their identity to set up a limited liability company (LLC) to collect the winnings on their behalf.
The winner of the $1.537 billion ticket, which was bought in South Carolina in 2018, is still unknown.
