Hours remain for missing lottery victor to come forward

He also says those claiming to be jackpot winners routinely face an investigation to determine the credibility of the claim. In January, they sent him a second letter informing him that a review of the ticket found it “too damaged to be reconstructed”.

Lopez said it is standard procedure for the lottery to send congratulatory letters to all winners claiming a prize.

The winning ticket was drawn on August 8, 2015, and sold at a 7-11 in Chastworth, near Los Angeles.

Lottery officials said this week the holder of the winning ticket must come forward by the end of business Thursday, or the $63 million jackpot will be forfeited, making it the largest California Lottery jackpot ever to be forfeited. “To date, no one has come forward to claim this jackpot-winning ticket and is now alarmingly close to losing it all!”

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 owner of the ticket had 180 days from the lottery draw to claim the prize.

Milliner is now asking a judge to declare him the victor of the jackpot.

“At this point, the odds are slim of anybody coming forward”, lottery spokesman Alex Traverso told the L.A. Times.

Now the largest unclaimed California Lottery prize in history was $28.5 million.

This is not a one-off occurrence, across America about $2 billion in lottery prizes go unclaimed every year, with roughly 114 prizes worth $1 million going unclaimed last year alone.

If the prize remains unclaimed, the money will go to support public schools. The winning ticket was sold in 2003 in San Lorenzo in Alameda County.