Although several weeks have passed since the Mega Millions lottery draw was held, which delivered $1,340 million dollars, it is still not have news regarding who was the lucky winner of such an amount of money.
It seems to be an extremely strange situation because who would not want to have in their hands such an amount of money that would undoubtedly change your life and could solve most of your problems; however, the truth is that there is a long list of notable lottery prizes that have never been collected.
According to CNN, a lottery expert named Brett Jacobson conducted an investigation on the subject, stating that there are billions of dollars in unclaimed lottery prizes each year.
Jacobson also explains that most unclaimed lottery prizes are small. For example, Powerball has a $4 prize for matching only the Powerball number, while Mega Millions has a $2 prize for matching your Mega Millions number.
But some of the secondary prizes may be worth $1 million or more and it is very likely that some of those millionaire prizes will never be claimed.
While it is possible to claim a winning ticket some time after the drawing, some states only give ticket holders tickets 6 months to do it.
According to the lottery expert, many lottery players do not even know they have won any secondary prizes because they don’t check their tickets after entering that there hasn’t been a jackpot winner or that the winning ticket was purchased out of state.
Even some winning instant game tickets for scratch cards are never handed out to claim the prize, Jacobson said. People lose the winning ticket or put it aside and forget to turn it in during the allotted time.
According to this man’s research, in the last 16 years there have been 5 unclaimed jackpots ranging from $31 million a ticket purchased in Queens, New York, in August 2006, up to $77 million a winning ticket purchased in Georgia in June of 2011. The oldest unclaimed ticket is the $68 million winner purchased in New York on Christmas Eve of 2002.
All these prizes have since expired, so even if someone found the winning tickets today, there would be no way to collect them.
Although there are exceptions, the truth is that the big winners almost they always collect their earnings, although many do so through trusts or other means to remain anonymous.
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