A Freeport Deli Just Sold a $3 Million Bonus Stars Winner — the $10 Ticket We Ranked No. 2 in New York the Day It Sold

FREEPORT, N.Y. — A Long Island deli just sold a $3,000,000 winning scratch-off. The winning $3,000,000 Bonus Stars ticket was bought at a small Nassau County storefront and, weeks later, claimed through a family trust — a win confirmed by the New York State Gaming Commission. It landed on the $10 game our Smart Score had ranked the No. 2 ticket in New York on the very day the ticket was bought.

For us, that is the part of this story worth telling. The jackpot itself is luck — a top prize out of more than 17 million tickets printed. But the game it landed on was no surprise at all. If you had been reading our rankings on June 11, $3,000,000 Bonus Stars was sitting near the very top of the board — the second-best $10 ticket in the state, behind only Set For Life.

The win

The winning ticket was bought at Torres Deli & Grocery in Freeport, an ordinary neighborhood deli and grocery on Broadway in Nassau County — about as far from a glamorous lottery headquarters as you can get. The prize was claimed by the Ronald Stuckey Revocable Trust at the New York Lottery's Long Island Customer Service Center in Plainview. The advertised top prize is $3,000,000, paid out as $250,000 a year in annual installments.

The Gaming Commission confirmed the win and the purchase location. New York doesn't make a habit of publishing exactly which store sold a given top-prize ticket, which is part of why this one is worth a closer look — and why we can tell you with confidence which game it landed on, and exactly how we had that game ranked the day it was bought.

Why it took 18 days: the trust

Here is the unusual wrinkle. The ticket was bought on June 11, but the prize was not claimed until late June. That gap is not a coincidence — the prize was claimed through the Ronald Stuckey Revocable Trust, not by an individual walking up to the counter.

Claiming a large lottery prize through a trust is a common and often smart move. It can help with privacy, estate planning, and how the money is managed and shared. But it also takes time to set up the paperwork, which is why nearly three weeks passed between the purchase and the claim. We can see that delay directly in our own data, because the public top-prize count on Bonus Stars didn't budge until the claim finally posted.

The game: $3,000,000 Bonus Stars ($10)

$3,000,000 Bonus Stars is a $10 New York scratch-off released in spring 2026. Its top prize is a seven-figure annuity, and the game launched with just three of them across the entire print run.

• Top prize: $3,000,000, paid as $250,000 a year in annual installments (three total at launch)
• Odds of any prize: about 1 in 3.99
• Print run: about 17.6 million tickets, roughly a third sold by late June
• Still on the board: deep mid-tier value, including 6× $5,000, 9× $2,000, and roughly 15,900 prizes of $500

By our numbers, Bonus Stars spent all of June as one of the best $10 plays in the state — not because of who just won on it, but because of how much value was still locked inside the remaining print run. That is exactly what our Smart Score is built to measure.

How we had this game ranked the day it sold

Every day, we re-score every active New York scratch-off and rank them by remaining value. Here is where Bonus Stars sat on our board around the June 11 purchase — pulled straight from our archived daily ranking snapshots, nothing added after the fact.

The pattern is hard to miss. On June 11, the day the winning ticket was bought, Bonus Stars was the No. 2 ranked $10 scratch-off in all of New York and No. 4 overall out of 65 active games — and it held that No. 2 spot in its price class on nearly every day that month, behind only Set For Life. Anyone following our rankings was being pointed straight at the game that had just quietly minted a millionaire in Freeport.

Our data caught the win — 18 days later

We snapshot the New York Lottery's remaining-prize data every single day. Those snapshots are time-stamped, and ours show exactly how long the trust claim took to surface:

The public count held at three for more than two weeks, then dropped to two once the trust completed its claim in late June. It is a rare, clean look at the gap between when a winning ticket is sold and when the system actually records it — on a game we already had near the top of the board the whole time.

Where Bonus Stars ranks now

Here is the good news for anyone wondering whether the big one is gone: it isn't. The Freeport win was just the first of three. Two of the three $3,000,000 top prizes are still unclaimed, sitting somewhere in the remaining print run.

Today, $3,000,000 Bonus Stars carries a Smart Score in the high 70s and ranks No. 3 among all $10 New York scratch-offs — still a solid play in its price class. The score slipped from the low-to-mid 90s the day the claim posted, because a $3 million top prize coming off the board is real value lost, and our model marks that down immediately. But with most of its tickets still unsold and two top prizes live, it remains exactly the kind of game our rankings are designed to surface.

What to take away as a player

1. Follow the game, not the address. Torres Deli is not "lucky" — a store that sold a jackpot is no more likely to sell the next one. The value lives in the game: which top prizes and big mid-tier prizes are still on the board.
2. Bonus Stars still has the goods. Two of three $3,000,000 top prizes remain, on a game that is still a top-three $10 play.
3. Big winners often use a trust. If you ever hit a life-changing prize, claiming through a trust or with a lawyer's help is worth understanding — it is exactly what happened here, and it is why the win took weeks to surface.
4. Check the rankings before you buy. Our Smart Score updates daily on official New York Lottery data, so you are always looking at where the value is today.
5. Play within your means. Even the best-ranked $10 ticket is still a bet with a house edge. Treat it as entertainment, never as income.

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For entertainment and informational purposes only. Please play responsibly. If gambling is a problem for you or someone you know, call the New York Problem Gambling HOPEline at 1-877-846-7369.