Only hours left for victor to claim $63 million California lotto prize

A deadline to claim a $63 million lottery prize from a ticket sold a year ago in Southern California passed on Thursday evening without anyone stepping forward with a valid slip, officials said, although a man has sued saying his ticket is the victor. Any unclaimed prize money is added to the amount already allocated, said lottery spokesman Alex Traverso.

This week, a Los Angeles county man filed a lawsuit against the California Lottery, claiming they destroyed his winning ticket, The Los Angeles Times reports.

If the Lotto prize remains unclaimed, She said in accordance with their licence all unclaimed prizes must be used “exclusively to promote the National Lottery with the core objective of raising funds for good causes”.

“We do have some claims to investigate”, he said.

Lots of claims, no luck.

Lottery officials have sent out repeated calls for the victor to contact them, and media coverage ramped up as the deadline dwindled to days and then hours.

The victor of the SuperLotto Plus ticket bought it at a Chatsworth 7-Eleven in August, reports CBS News correspondent Ben Tracy. It matched all the winning numbers, 46-1-33-30-16 and the mega number 24, to hit the jackpot.

A California victor has also failed to claim a share in the January 13 multistate Powerball prize of US$1.6 billion. “Especially when you’re talking about millions and millions of dollars, those aren’t just processed through with a rubber stamp”, Traverso said Wednesday. If that happens, it will be the largest California Lottery jackpot ever forfeited.

The victor can accept the $63 million in payments spread out over 30 years or accept a much smaller lump sum of $39.9 million (before federal taxes).

The letter cited a section of the California Lottery Act that explained the commission was unable to process Milliner’s claim, the suit states.

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