An unclaimed $1 million Lotto 6/49 ticket in Canada will soon expire

Check your pockets, your glove compartment, and your junk drawers. Twice.

A winning $1 million Lotto 6/49 ticket has yet to be claimed and will soon expire, and the BCLC wants the winner to come forward before it’s too late.

The ticket was purchased in Maple Ridge, BC, for the September 28, 2022, draw and contained the winning Gold Ball Draw number: 12299795-01.

Lotto BC/Facebook

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According to a release from BCLC, players can check their tickets at any BCLC lottery retailer in the province as well as anytime online or on the BCLC Lotto! App.

All lotto winners have 52 weeks from the draw date printed on the ticket to claim their prize.

In an interview with Daily Hive last year, OLG Spokesperson Tony Bitonti said that only 1% of prizes go unclaimed.

He also said that people tend to put their tickets in jacket pockets where they sit forgotten in the closet when the weather changes. Other tickets end up in glove compartments or junk drawers or worse: the washing machine.

@atlanticlottery/Instagram

Hopefully, the holder of the Lotto 6/49 ticket will not become another cautionary tale after another massive lotto prize was officially declared unclaimed upon going unvalidated after a year.

In what it called “a rare occurrence in Canadian lottery history,” the OLG reported on June 29, 2023, that the physical $70 million lotto ticket was not validated at a terminal or presented to the corporation on or before the deadline of 10:30 pm June 28, 2023.

Prior to the expiry deadline, almost 2,700 calls and emails from people claiming to have lost the ticket were logged by OLG’s Customer Care Centre.

With files from Isabelle Docto