Winning the lottery has the power to completely change your life, but not if you fail to realize you had the winning ticket in the first place. This happened to one player from Leeds, who will never be reunited with their £1.000.000 prize since they failed to come forward and collect it when the time was right.
The mystery player purchased their winning Lotto Millionaire Raffle ticket all the way back in February. They had 180 days to come forward, but missed the deadline on August 23rd. Andy Carter, senior winners’ advisor at The National Lottery, wasn’t pleased to announce the news, but expressed his hope they’ll be able to avoid situations like this one in the future.
“Unfortunately, I can confirm that the ticket-holder did not come forward within the deadline to claim their prize and has now sadly missed out on this substantial amount of money. To avoid this unfortunate situation happening again, I would urge all National Lottery players to check their tickets on a regular basis,” said Carter.
Prizes that are not collected within 180 days end up being transferred to National Lottery’s Good Causes fund. By buying lottery tickets for National Lottery games, players have helped raise more than £38.000.000.000 since 1994. This money was used to fund over 535.000 different projects across the country.
“We tried very hard to find the ticket-holder and it’s a real shame that they have missed out, but there is still one winner – the nation. This money, and all the interest earned over the 180 days, will now go to benefit projects, funded by The National Lottery,” concluded Carter.
