You Could Have the Winning Lottery Ticket

There’s $50,000 with your name on it, just waiting to be collected. And this time, it’s not your great grandmother’s inheritance — it’s the lottery ticket crumpled on your dashboard.

Right now an unclaimed sum of $50,000 in lottery winnings is just waiting for someone to realize that the odds were in their favor. The winning ticket was bought at an E-Z shop in Manning, South Carolina, in December and matched four of the white ball numbers as well as 25, the winning Powerball number, according to wistv.com. Now all this lucky person needs to do is collect the cash.

The deadline, though, is Monday. Surprising, isn’t it?

But not really. In 2015, approximately 114 prizes worth $1 million went unclaimed in lottery winnings. Why?

Many people forget to check for smaller winnings when they find out they haven’t won the jackpot, Brett Jacobson told CNN Money. Jacobson is the creator of the app Lotto Lotto, which helps users discover their potential winnings after the numbers have been drawn. The app would theoretically help lottery players realize their winnings even if they don’t receive the jackpot. 

The most recent lottery mishap occurred in February in Los Angeles, when someone failed to claim a $63 million ticket, KTLA reported. The unclaimed lottery tickets in California go toward funding for schools, so even if someone misses out on the riches, many kids will benefit. When winners fail to show up for their rewards by the appropriate deadline, the prize is forfeited and the ticket becomes worthless to the now-luckless holder. 

In Massachusetts alone over $10 million in various tickets were never cashed in; the unclaimed money flows into the general fund used for local aid around the state, according to WWLP 22.  

In terms of options for play, major lotteries in the U.S are the Powerball and Mega Millions drawings, in addition to individual state drawings.

[lz_table title=”Four Biggest Lottery Winners in U.S.A” source=”Biggest Lottery Winners”]

|Highest (2016)

Powerball, $1.6 billion

|Second (2012)

Megamillions, $656 million

|Third (2013)

Megamillions, $648 million

|Fourth (2013)

Powerball, $590 million

[/lz_table]

Powerball is a game that draws five white balls from a pot of 69 balls, and one red ball from 26 others. The drawing occurs every Wednesday and Saturday night typically at 10:59 p.m., each ticket costs $2 and sales of the tickets are cut off 59 minutes before the balls are selected, according to the Powerball website.

The Powerball jackpot can be won if the red ball and all 5 white balls match, regardless of order. The winnings are gathered in either an annuitized prize over 29 years or a giant lucky lump of cash.

The holder of the $50,000 ticket in South Carolina still has six days to line up their numbers rather than becoming the next almost-fortunate lottery winner. So if you recently discarded a lottery ticket in despair after hearing the grand prize winner — look again, you may have still have some luck left.