Big lottery prizes go unclaimed in Ontario

There are more than two dozen lucky lotto winners out there who haven’t claimed their 2020 prizes, including three worth $1 million each.

According to the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. (OLG), 27 tickets remain unclaimed in Ontario, as of Oct. 7, 2020 — the last time lottery officials tallied the totals.

The three top prizes of $1 million for Lotto 649 were purchased in Burlington on Feb. 25, Cambridge on April 15, and in Markham, on June 24.

“Some people check their tickets right away and come get their free ticket the next time they get a ticket,” said said OLG spokesperson Tony Bitonti. “That’s the pattern we’ve seen. But others will put (their ticket) in their back pocket, a junk drawer, the sunshade on their car and will forget about it for a while.”

There are a few $100,000 prizes, which have yet to be claimed. One of those tickets, an Encore/lotto Max, was bought in the Toronto area on Feb. 25; another — a Lotto 649 ticket — was bought in Woodbridge on April 4; and two tickets were picked up in the Ottawa area on July 4 and Sept. 4 for Encore and Encore/lotto Max, respectively.

The smallest outstanding prize on the list amounts to $10,000.

“When the pandemic first hit, everyone was afraid to go out,” said Bitonti. “For some tickets that were going to expire during that period where everything was closed down, we did extend the expiry date by six months. But that’s long past.”

Last year, OLG paid out nearly $2.3 billion in prizes. Bitoni said people with winning tickets have a year from the draw date to claim their money.

OLG also keeps tabs of those tickets close to expiration and about a month before the claim deadline, the agency puts out a news release to the community where the ticket was sold in hopes of alerting the winner.

But if people are unable to claim the winnings, that money goes back to players through bonus games or promotions if they’re national draws, such as Lotto Max and Lotto 649. For Ontario-specific games, such as Lottario or Daily Keno, unclaimed winnings are returned to the provincial government under the OLGC Act.

While most unclaimed tickets tend to be small amounts, the biggest unclaimed prize in Canada was a Lotto 649 ticket worth $14.9 million in 2006, purchased in western Canada.

In Ontario, the largest unclaimed prize was $5 million from a Lotto 649 draw in 2005.