Brentwood man hits jackpot in state lottery's scratch-off game; takes $4.2 million payout
Nazir Ahmad, owner of the store on Brentwood Road in Bay Shore, holds scratch-off tickets on Monday. Credit: James Carbone
A Brentwood man hit it big with a $20 scratch-off ticket this holiday season, scoring the jackpot prize of $10,000 a week for life, state lottery officials announced.
The lottery identified the winner as Mack Peoples, and said that in lieu of the weekly payments, he elected to take a one-time payout of $4,224,667 after taxes.
The ticket was purchased at a 7-Eleven store on Brentwood Road in Bay Shore.
Officials did not say when the ticket was purchased — or when Peoples came forward to claim the prize.
Attempts to reach Peoples for comment were not immediately successful Monday.
Officials said that as of Monday, two grand-prize tickets were still out there and unclaimed for the $10,000 a Week for Life scratch-off game No. 1584.
The prior $10,000 a Week for Life game, No. 1478, has no top prizes remaining, according to the lottery.
The scratch-off features a $10,000-a-week-for-life top prize (with three winning tickets available; now, two remain) and has a second-place prize of $10,000 and third-place prize of $2,500.
The guaranteed minimum payout for the Life winner is $10 million, before taxes, officials said.
The lottery still has a number of big-ticket scratch-off prizes out there on a wide range of games, including: the $30 ticket Jackpot Fortune; $20 ticket Millionaire Maker; $10 ticket Set for Life; $10 ticket Holiday $1,000,000; the $5 ticket $1,000,000 Golden Fortune; and, $5 ticket $1,000,000 Lucky Dog, among others.
The lottery said that scratch-off ticket games generated more than $4.4 billion in sales during the 2022-23 fiscal year, with school districts in Suffolk receiving more than $359 mllion in Lottery Aid to Education during that time. The funding to Nassau schools during that time was not immediately available, though lottery officials said $3.7 billion was sent to schools statewide in 2022-23.
John Valenti, a reporter at Newsday since 1981, has been honored nationally by the Associated Press and Society of the Silurians for investigative, enterprise and breaking news reporting, as well as column writing, and is the author of “Swee'pea,” a book about former New York playground basketball star Lloyd Daniels. Valenti is featured in the Emmy Award-winning ESPN 30-for-30 film “Big Shot.”
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