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 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 Tuesday 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.

Not first controversy for lottery

The revelations open a new line of questions about the conduct of a lottery stung by past controversies involving how players have been treated in the era of private management.

In 2011, Illinois became the first state in the nation to hire a private company to manage day-to-day operations of its lottery when it tapped Northstar Lottery Group — a company formed by two longtime vendors — to run the enterprise.

In 2016, the Tribune reported that under Northstar, the lottery — looking to boost excitement and sales for scratch-offs — advertised dramatically larger grand prizes. But the lottery printed far more tickets than it did previously. Sales increased, but not enough to get through massive ticket pools. So as sales waned, games were pulled off shelves early — sometimes before all, or even any, life-changing grand prizes were awarded.

A Tribune investigation found the Illinois Lottery collected hundreds of millions of dollars from selling tickets to the biggest-prize instant games in which it did not hand out all of the grand prizes in some of the games. (Illinois Lottery) (Illinois Lottery)

The Tribune’s latest analysis found that, conversely, the lottery sometimes allows games to stay on the market well after the top prizes are gone.

This means players have shelled out millions of dollars trying to land big prizes that they have zero chance of winning — because those prizes have already been handed out.

At Doti Liquors in Elmhurst on a recent Friday morning, Cortez Lawrence was just leaving for work after a stretch of bad luck left him with just $60 in winnings from $200 worth of instant game tickets.

The 36-year-old truck driver said he played scratch-off games for 15 years before he realized a few years ago he could go online to check whether there were any remaining top prizes in the games he wanted to play. Several other players interviewed by the Tribune said they were unaware of the lottery’s practice of keeping games available after top prizes have been awarded.

“I just randomly (played),” Lawrence said. “I wasn’t aware that those jackpots had gone out of the game. I was thinking I had a chance to win when they were already gone.”

Lawrence said he believes the lottery should not be selling tickets for games that no longer have top prizes available.

“If someone wins the top prize, I would think they should take the game down,” he said.

According to the lottery’s procedures, officials “may” consider several factors in deciding to close a game, including when all top prizes are claimed. However, the policy does not set forth a specific time frame for removing games from the market, nor does it require games to be discontinued after all top prizes have been awarded.

Enough notice for players?

Nearly every week, the lottery publishes a list on its website of all the games currently on the market, along with how many prizes remain unclaimed for each game.

A Tribune review of those records showed that in November, only one game was still on the market without a top prize available: the $2 game Here Lies Buried Riches, which offered four top prizes of $20,000.

That game was eventually pulled from the market in early January, but by the end of that month, eight more games were still on sale without any unclaimed top prizes, ranging in price from $2 to the $30 World Class Millions game touting top prizes of $15 million.

By the time the lottery issued its March 6 instant prize list, 10 of the 63 games on sale no longer had a top prize available.

Gottlieb said players should reasonably expect the lottery to disclose to them, at the point of purchase, the actual number of top prizes remaining and the mere fact that tickets will be sold after top prizes are no longer available.