Canada’s Biggest Lottery Losers

Every year there are huge sums of unclaimed lottery wins published in different parts of the world. For instance, Americans lose in the vicinity of $ 2 billion in unclaimed lottery prizes per annum. In the UK, close to £ 122.5 million in lottery winnings went unclaimed from 2017 to 2018.

It’s surprising why people don’t come forth to claim the lottery prizes after all?! Amongst the most commonly known reasons for lottery prizes going unclaimed is that people assume that they haven’t won anything if they don’t win the jackpot prize. It’s important to note that you are still eligible for other substantial prizes even if you match a few numbers on your lottery ticket. Other than that, people often get discouraged seeing others win the jackpot, so much so that they don’t even check their own tickets for smaller prizes. Let’s tell you about some such biggest unclaimed lottery prizes in Canada.

Unclaimed $ 60 million Lotto Max Jackpot drawn on October 26, 2018

The top jackpot prize for the $ 60 million Lotto Max Jackpot which was drawn on October 26, 2018 is yet to be claimed by the lucky winner. It has been confirmed that the winning ticket was sold in Edmonton. Kevin van Egdom, the spokesperson for the Western Canada Lottery Corporation (WCLC) said that it’s still a waiting game at their end until someone presents the winning ticket. All the winners usually have one year from the draw date to claim the prize, so it’s safe to say that this one went unclaimed. The province has 7 more unclaimed Maxmillions lottery prizes from early June 2018, including a couple of $ 1 million prizes.

26 Unclaimed OLG Lottery prizes worth over $ 4.4 million

As of now there are 26 unclaimed Ontario Lottery and Gaming prizes amounting to over $ 4.4 million. OLG is well known to pay out 99% of prize money every year. However, in 2018, while $ 2.38 billion was paid out to the winners, close to $ 24 million remained unclaimed. Of all these, there was a $ 1 million Lotto Max ticket that was sold in downtown Toronto in December 2018, which was never claimed.

$ 1 million won by unidentified person in October 2018

An unidentified player from Guelph purchased a winning lottery ticket amounting to $ 1 million. The winner chose to remain anonymous, however, never came forth to claim the win, and hence remained unidentified. This ticket was purchased for the draw held on October 1, 2018, and there is no trace of the lucky winner till date.

Sadly, this isn’t the only incident where the winner didn’t turn up. There are in fact two $ 1 million lottery prizes that are yet to be claimed in the province. Both these prizes will eventually expire if not claimed by the owners. The expiry period is normally set at 52 weeks.