Have you the €1m ticket?

Last chance to claim a life-changing fortune as deadline looms

IT has to be somebody. So is it you? One forgetful lottery winner has just over 24 hours to collect a €1million jackpot – before they lose it forever.

National Lottery chiefs last night again urged people to check tickets bought in Cork on February 23.

Last week they even sent a team to the city to help find the winner, erecting posters in and around the Eason store in the Wilton Shopping Centre in Cork city where the Quick Pick was bought.

The winning code on the ticket, which lottery chiefs believe was bought locally, was I-DKB-06633.

Despite all their efforts to give away a million euro, so far nobody has claimed the fortune.

The win was part of a raffle held in addition to the EuroMillions draw which all EuroMillions players are entered into.

The special raffle - code was printed in the centre of tickets sold in addition to the usual EuroMillions numbers.

Lottery chiefs believe the winner should have known the ticket was entered into a European-wide draw that saw 25 €1million prizes handed out across the EU.

So, check all your coat pockets, look down the back of the sofa and flick through any books for lotto ticket bookmarks... this is your last chance.

Although the purchase of the ticket would have been captured on CCTV, lottery chiefs cannot access those recordings in an effort to ID the person. And even if they could access the images legally, they couldn’t share the images without consent.

‘Due to data protection rules, we can’t use CCTV to help us here,’ said Fran Whearty, National Lottery spokesman.

‘We will however, investigate every claim. One of the things we do is hold back certain details about the ticket so that the real winner can verify they actually have it.’

While close of business is 5.30pm tomorrow, lottery chiefs plan to be ‘accommodating’.

Last-minute claims have happened before. A family syndicate in Midleton, Co. Cork, for example, only realised an hour before their 90th-day 5.30pm deadline, in 2016, that they had won €200,000.

If prizes are not claimed within 90 days of the draw date, the money will go to promote the National Lottery.

Meanwhile, a tight-lipped group of Galway friends who won a combined fortune of €8,549,067 on May 12 have each pledged to keep both feet firmly on the ground, normality will have to wait until they experience a millionaire’s trip of a lifetime around the world.