"Since the notoriety of having the world's largest losing purchase, she hasn't come back much," said the store's assistant manager, James C. Cortell. A Huge Undertaking

In Virginia, trying to buy seven million lottery tickets would be a huge undertaking, even though outlets are allowed to be open 19 hours a day. Each game slip has room to select five combinations, so the first step would require filling out 1.4 million slips. Mr. Thorson, the state lottery director, said that he saw photocopies of several of the group's slips and that they appeared to have been filled out by hand.

The group used as many as eight chains of grocery and convenience stores, with a total of 125 outlets, in the Norfolk and Richmond areas, Mr. Thorson said. He said his agency notified state and Federal tax and law-enforcement officials about the unusual purchases. No apparant violations occurred, the officials said.

One chain, Farm Fresh, said it had sold 2.4 million tickets to a man who apparently managed the purchase for the group. The man went to the grocery chain's headquarters with cashier's checks for hundreds of thousands of dollars. The chain sent couriers to 40 stores to pick up the tickets. As identification, the messengers used the man's business card, with a code word added. The company's commission was $120,000, even though it returned $600,000 for tickets it did not have time to print.

Samuel W. Valenza Jr., the publisher of Lottery Player's Magazine in Cherry Hill, N.J., said Virginia officials should not have allowed retailers to help in the bulk purchases.

"It may not be against the rules, but it's not fair," Mr. Valenza said. "It's not the intent of the game to play against a player who has purchased all the tickets."

At its meeting today the governing board of the Virginia lottery discussed limiting block purchases. A lottery spokeswoman, Paula I. Otto, said the agency had received about six complaints from customers of stores involved in the block buying.