£28.5M lotto jackpot winner walks away with nothing after failing to claim prize

17 February 2024 , 19:32

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A person has missed out on $36 million after not claiming the prize (Image: AFP via Getty Images)

A person who scooped the massive £28.5 million ($36m) Mega Millions jackpot has allowed the time to claim the prize run out, meaning they get nothing.

The winning ticket was bought at a Publix supermarket in Jacksonville, Florida, but being able to claim the prize ended on Sunday, with no one coming forward to collect the life-changing cash. The potential jackpot winner's numbers of 18, 39, 42, 57, 63 for the white balls and 7 for the Mega Ball came out on August 15, 2023.

And the organisers of draw Mega Millions and the Florida Lottery did warn people in the state who used the Publix to play the lottery to have a search and check tickets prior to the jackpot’s expiration date. The winning ticket holder had 180 days to claim the massive windfall.

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Mega Millions tickets, which are £1.50 ($2) each, are sold in all states except Alabama, Utah, Alaska, Hawaii and Nevada and the odds of winning the jackpot are about one in 302.6million. Those odds are worse than the one in 11.5million odds of being bitten by a shark or the one in 700,000 odds of giving birth to identical quadruplets.

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According to FOX Business, the Florida Lottery said: "Florida law requires that 80 percent of unclaimed prize funds from expired tickets be transferred directly to the Educational Enhancement Trust Fund. The remaining 20 percent is returned to the prize pool from which future prizes are awarded or used for special prize promotions. Should a Powerball or Mega Millions jackpot ticket not be claimed within 180 days of the applicable draw date, the funds to pay the unclaimed jackpot will be returned to the lottery members in their proportion of sales for the jackpot rollover series."

The fund gives money for public schools, universities and scholarships. The $36 million ticket’s expiration came with the Mega Millions jackpot now creeping up to the half-billion mark – at £362 million ($457m) on an annuitized basis as of Friday morning. As a one-time, cash payout, it is worth £171 million ($216.8m). Mega Million will conduct its next drawing for that potential windfall late Friday evening. The unclaimed ticket was just sold one week after a lucky person won a £1.3 billion ($1.58bn) Mega Millions prize in Florida. The winning ticket was purchased at the Publix at 630 Atlantic Blvd in Neptune Beach, 16 miles east of Jacksonville.

Paul Donald