Governor signs bill that lowers threshold for anonymous claims

By Kate Northrop

The Virginia governor signed a bill into law this week that will lower the threshold for a Virginia lottery winner to be able to hide their identity when claiming a prize.

Starting July, lottery winners of prizes worth $1 million or more in Virginia will be able to claim their winnings without revealing their names to the public.

House Bill 1799, sponsored by State Representative Scott Wyatt, was signed into law by Governor Glenn Youngkin on Tuesday. Under previous Virginia law, a lottery prize would have to be valued at $10 million or greater in order to remain anonymous, but the law amendment will lower that threshold to prizes valued at $1 million or greater.

The new law goes into effect July 1, 2025.

Prior to the amendment, there had been debate over whether the lower threshold jeopardizes the transparency of large lottery wins. Release of winners' names, some argued, is what reassures the public that real players are winning real prizes.

Virginia Coalition for Open Government Executive Director Megan Rhyne voiced concerns that lowering the threshold for public disclosure of lottery winners will create more opportunities for "nefarious activities," such as Virginia Lottery employees illegally playing and winning the lottery.

An example of such conduct is when former Multi-State Lottery Association Information Security Director Eddie Tipton rigged lottery jackpots and went on to fraudulently win millions of dollars.

Despite his attempts to remain anonymous when claiming the prize, however, the Iowa Lottery still required the name of the player to whom they would be paying out the winnings, and he was subsequently caught.

Virginia Lottery Executive Director Khalid Jones confirmed the procedure, explaining that the Lottery must internally verify the identity and address of any winner of over $600, even if winner's identities are not made available through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

"We run those names through our internal system to ensure that they're not the members of the lottery playing themselves," Jones said.

Any winner of a prize valued at $1 million or more will not have identifying information, such as name, hometown, and amount won, be disclosed through FOIA requests unless the winner consents in writing, the bill says.

The actual Virginia House Bill 1799 can be found in the Related Links section of this article below.

Lottery Post maintains a state-by-state list of lottery privacy laws throughout the United States and several other countries.