GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Nestled in a shopping center between a Publix and a nail salon off a busy street is a lottery office where players come to claim their prizes.
Inside, winners present their ID and ticket to a worker behind a series of glass panels. They fill out a claim form, then sit in one of the gray chairs along a series of teal walls while they wait for their name to be called. A tall, red lottery machine stands to the left of the panels, just in case people want to scratch a lottery ticket while they wait.
Soon, a worker hands them a check for their prize amount, and they are on their way.
Most of the winners came in to claim large prizes, those worth $600 or more.
The odds of winning a big prize are low. But some players have won so big, so often that their luck defies reason, according to an investigation by Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications.
To investigate the Florida Lottery, reporters analyzed 1.5 million scratch-off claims of at least $600 from 2015 through mid-December 2025. That’s the minimum amount that must be reported to the IRS.
Fields in the data included winners’ names - often times first, middle and last - and the name of the cities where they live. Reporters grouped the data on these fields, narrowing down the chances of assigning wins to the wrong player.
For players they profiled, we checked public records making sure there was only one person with that name in the town they lived.
Reporters focused on winners who repeatedly beat high odds. About 70 players won more than 100 times during the 11-year span.
Reporters checked property records and state business filings to see who these players were. Some were licensed lottery retailers. Others were relatives of retailers.
Interviews with more than two dozen lottery experts and players and a review of nearly 100 criminal court cases provided insight into how players claimed so many winning tickets.
Advanced data journalism tools helped with the investigation. Reporters used R, a database manager, to analyze the data and to scrape odds for specific scratch-off games. They used QGIS to map retail locations and artificial intelligence tools to help comb through court documents.
Reporters then shared their findings with two statisticians, who calculated how unlikely it would be to legitimately win as often as Florida’s top players did.
For nearly two months, reporters asked to interview Florida Lottery officials. They declined. A spokeswoman said the lottery did not have staff available to speak.