CHICAGO _ At $30 a ticket, the Illinois Lottery's World Class Millions instant game was not only one of its priciest offerings _ it was also potentially one of the most lucrative for players.
"WIN UP TO $15,000,000! THE HIGHEST INSTANT PAYOUT IN ILLINOIS LOTTERY HISTORY," shouted a banner across the magenta and silver ticket.
But for the last five weeks the game was on sale this year, none of the three $15 million prizes remained. Yet players purchased an estimated 26,000 tickets during that time, spending about $793,000.
Illinois' practice of keeping some scratch-off games on the market indefinitely after top prizes have been awarded stands in contrast to states like South Carolina and Texas, whose lotteries are required to pull a game within a specific time frame once the last remaining top prize has been claimed.
A Chicago Tribune investigation found that, since the end of October, World Class Millions was just one of 15 instant games the Illinois Lottery continued to sell for weeks or months after there were no more top prizes to win. One game, the $2 Cash Wheel game, was still on the market as of April 17 even though its last top prize was awarded in January.
From mid-November to mid-March, the lottery sold more than 3 million instant game tickets _ costing players more than $20 million _ for games that no longer had any top prize available, according to the Tribune's analysis of lottery records. And at one point in early March, nearly 1 in 6 games on sale no longer had a top prize available.
Continuing to allow instant game sales after top prizes are awarded has long been a lottery policy _ one that officials note is printed on the backs of tickets.
But there's virtually no way players can see the fine print until after they've purchased a ticket. It is not displayed online, or at the thousands of stores where tickets are sold, or via lottery vending machines.
Players do have the option of visiting the lottery's website to find out whether a game still has a top prize available. But the Tribune found the lists aren't updated at regular intervals _ sometimes not for up to two weeks.
Critics said the lack of easy access to information about top-prize availability, coupled with the lottery's sales policies, mean players can be easily misled about their chances.
"If they did operate with integrity, and tell people that these top prizes might not be available, people wouldn't buy these tickets," said Les Bernal, national director of Stop Predatory Gambling, an organization that opposes state-sponsored gambling, including casinos and lotteries.
"Normally, if this was any other product, this would be the kind of consumer protection concern that the state attorney general would be investigating," said Mark Gottlieb, executive director of the Public Health Advocacy Institute at Northeastern University School of Law in Massachusetts.
"But because it's the state lottery, they're exempt from just about all consumer protections that Illinois law would provide a consumer for any other industry," Gottlieb said.
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