Half of the 20 most frequent New Jersey Lottery prizewinners since 2009 are reportedly either licensed lottery retailers or family members of store operators.

An investigation by the Asbury Park Press found that as a group, those 10 people collected 840 prizes totalling nearly $1.8 million and that about 70 percent of those payouts were for Pick 4 tickets, where the odds of winning are 1 in 10,000.

The New Jersey Lottery told the newspaper that it is investigating some of the people on the list to see if they're actually illegally cashing in other players' winning tickets for a percentage of the winnings.

Lottery merchants and their relatives account for five of the New Jersey Lottery's six most frequent prizewinners since 2009, the Asbury Park Press reported.

A leading lottery statistician told the Press that some of these people would have to have spent more than $1 million on tickets over the course of their winning streaks to be so successful.

Pramila Baile, of Millstone, whose son operates two liquor stores in Ocean County that sell lottery tickets, was the state's most prolific lottery winner since 2009. During that time, she claimed 134 prizes totaling more than $275,000, the newspaper reported.

Since 2004, she has claimed prizes totaling almost $350,000, which included payouts of $5,000, $12,000 and $20,000 for instant scratch-off games, and dozens of prizes for winning "straight bets" in Pick 4, the Press reported.

"I'm surprised that she's won that much," said her son, Shravan K. Baile, the owner of Bailey's Discount Liquors in Lakehurst and Wine World in Manchester, told the Asbury Park Press.

Baile said his mother was in India and unavailable for comment.

The Press also found that more than two dozen members of an extended family that operates a chain of Cedar Food Market stores in Atlantic County have claimed a total of 368 prizes worth nearly $958,000 since 2004.

"That is a subject we're not interested in talking about," one of the winners, Nimer Nammour, 55, of Atlantic City, told a Press reporter before hanging up the telephone.

Fred Altiero, a lottery agent who operates Altiero Liquors in Paterson, has claimed 244 lottery prizes totaling more than $500,000 since 2004. His wife and adult children claimed another 88 prizes worth $209,439.50, the newspaper reported.

A lottery statistician calculated Altiero would statistically have had to spent more than $1.2 million over the course of almost 11 years — or about $315 per day — to produce that many wins.

New Jersey Lottery spokeswoman Judith L. Drucker told the Asbury Park Press that the division aggressively enforces the discounting ban through random field inspections and undercover visits.

Drucker said the Lottery's Security Unit has initiated more than 1,200 investigations involving agent claims so far this year, and established 41 cases attributable to ticket discounting. Some of those investigations are still underway

"We have a very thorough and strict investigative process, so we're confident our security team is doing what they're supposed to be doing," she told the newspaper.

Rob Spahr may be reached at rspahr@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TheRobSpahr. Find NJ.com on Facebook.