SELDEN, NY – Suffolk County mother and daughter Marilyn Looney and Carol Prevete have more than luck to thank for their recent seven-figure win on a New York Lottery’s $7,000,000 Golden Ticket scratch-off game. The pair said trust was a critical part of their winning strategy.

“We’ve been pooling our money to buy Lottery tickets for years now and we always split whatever prize we win,” explained Prevete, 50, a bookkeeper who lives with her husband and four children in Selden.

Such was the case last month when Marilyn Looney arrived early for a hair appointment and decided to walk to the nearby Mili Cards & Smoke shop on Middle Country Rd. in Selden for a couple of tickets.

“My hairdresser was really busy so I took a walk,” said the 82-year-old Looney, a former Estes Lauder employee currently living in Middle Island. “I didn’t scratch it. I just scanned it, but the sun glare on the screen made it hard to read so I gave it to the clerk to check. He re-scanned it and jumped five feet in the air. He was very excited for me.”

Looney said she took the ticket back to the hair salon and called her daughter.

“She kept saying, ‘We won! We Won!” which didn’t really surprise me because she always wins on the scratch-offs,” Prevete said before realizing the amount of her mother’s win. “The most we ever shared before this was somewhere around $20,000 to $29,000,” she said.

Not surprisingly, Looney and Prevete opted to split the $7,000,000 Golden Ticket top prize 50/50 with each receiving a one-time payment of $3,500,000 (net $2,316,300).

Looney plans to use her half of the prize money to buy a home to share with Prevete and her family, which includes a set of 13-year-old of triplets. Prevete said she plans to pay off her current mortgage “and be debt free.”

The New York Lottery contributed $245,728,807.47 in Lottery Aid To Education to school districts throughout Suffolk County during fiscal year 2014-2015.

About the New York Lottery

The New York Lottery continues to be North America’s largest and most profitable Lottery, contributing $3.11 billion in fiscal year 2014-2015 to help support education in New York State.  The Lottery’s contribution represents 14 percent of total state education aid to local school districts. 

New York Lottery revenue is distributed to local school districts by the same statutory formula used to distribute other state aid to education.  It takes into account both a school district’s size and its income level; larger, lower-income school districts receive proportionately larger shares of Lottery school funding.