The Virgin Islands Lottery issued a new update on Monday on its recovery efforts following a cybersecurity incident that halted operations across the territory. The agency confirmed it is nearing completion of a major restoration project, which began last week and involves extensive data recovery, system testing, and coordination with multiple partners.
According to VIL officials, the recovery team—comprising contractors, staff from the Bureau of Information Technology (BIT), and internal lottery personnel—has been actively re-entering lost information into the system. Most of the critical data has already been restored, with the agency targeting Wednesday, April 2, 2025 as the projected date for full completion of the restoration phase.
Once the data has been fully recovered, VIL said it will enter the “testing phase” to verify the accuracy of the restored information and to ensure all systems are functioning correctly. “Our next step will be the testing phase to ensure that the restored information is accurate and that all required systems are functional,” said VIL in its public statement.
Following successful testing, the Virgin Islands Lottery plans to resume operations in both the St. Thomas-St. John and St. Croix districts. Priority will be given to resuming ticket sales for drawing number 1048, while preparations are also underway to conduct drawing number 1047—which was previously delayed—by the end of the week. A specific date for that draw has not yet been finalized.
In addition to restoring ticket sales, the agency is also working to resume financial services, including the ability to print checks for customers, dealers, vendors, and other stakeholders impacted by the outage.
“We are cautiously optimistic that we can do drawing number 1047 by the end of this week, specific date to be determined,” the statement read.
Officials stressed that the Virgin Islands Lottery remains committed to transparency and will continue to issue public updates through its official website and social media platforms as progress continues.
“We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and assure the community that we are working as swiftly as possible to resume operations securely,” the agency said.
The recent outage has disrupted routine operations for the lottery and affected thousands of players, vendors, and employees.
