The unclaimed lottery jackpot: it seems unrealistic, but the fact is that every tens of years of heavy Jackpots are left unclaimed. Unclaimed lottery winnings have been increasing. In most of these cases, efforts to locate the rightful owners of these lotteries are passed in vain. In 2005, Illinois reported $ 14 million in unclaimed lottery winnings. Indiana has reported more than $ 5 million of unclaimed lottery tickets in the same year. State of Massachusetts reported $4,6 million unclaimed money lottery a few years earlier. Between 2008 and 2009, Georgia reported nearly $ 45 million of unclaimed lottery money.
Connecticut hasn’t had a winning ticket expire without a winner for nearly a decade. Prizes not collected is defined as the jackpot by Clarence Jackson Jr. in some regions. Mr. Jackson, three days late in turning in the winning ticket of $ 5.8 million in 1996, has never received a penny. Of the 1,100 jackpots Connecticut has paid, since the lottery began here in 1972, 11 have gone unclaimed.
Each State has its own time frame established for the validity of a lottery ticket. East Coast States like Connecticut, New York and New Jersey offers a period of 1 year’s statement to his players by lottery to claim their cash prize. Some other countries have a period of validity of three to six months.
According to a USA Today survey conducted, 1 nearly half billion dollars of unclaimed lottery money was reported last year. Minnesota demonstrates the maturity of a lottery ticket of $ 1.5 million in January, while Oregon has signaled the end of lottery winning $7,5 million in June. Florida announced a $ 3 million lottery ticket worth is about to expire on Christmas Eve.
Dawn nettles, Publisher of a newsletter that covers the lottery, the Lotto report accuses Lottery practices for many of the unclaimed prizes. “It’s so frustrating that I can hardly talk about it,” he says. Computer scanning errors cost lottery players rewards, she says. A very obvious case of lottery check enabled computer was detected in Ohio in 2006. The computer failed to validate a $267 millions winning ticket. Toledo’s fiscal lawyer Mark Mockensturm, who represented the winner, confirmed the story. “The computer system at the lottery Office in Cleveland not to read the coded ink,” she says. The ticket was validated in other ways. “The size of the jackpot caused a hiccup,” Ohio Lottery spokeswoman Marie Kilbane said. The software was fixed, and the ticket has been paid for. “Okay,” she says.
Lotteries advertise great unclaimed prizes before they expire. “We tell people: ‘ check your tickets! Hey, you never know, ‘ “says John Charleson New York Lottery spokesman. So if you’re a regular buyer of Lottery and other lotteries, it makes sense to establish a simple checklist to validate and check the lottery numbers. So, for every purchase of raffle, this checklist is executed before the ticket is discarded. In case you have more old lottery tickets, it is important that the list of unclaimed lottery tickets is analyzed in every State where it was purchased. In this way, only Irredeemable lottery tickets are discarded.