Champagne on ice in hunt for £76million lottery winner
A LOTTERY player has failed to collect their £76million payout – two weeks after scooping one of Britain’s biggest jackpots in a EuroMillions draw.
The mystery ticket holder selected all seven winning numbers in the November 2 draw.
The winning ticket was bought in either the Lincolnshire seaside resort of Skegness or the county’s market town of Boston and the mammoth sum is the largest ever unclaimed prize.
Now people who bought a ticket for the draw in the region are being urged to check their tickets to see if they have been catapulted into the same near-£80million “rich list” bracket as pop superstar Ed Sheeran and tennis ace Sir Andy Murray.
Launching the hunt for the mystery winner in Boston’s Market Place yesterday, lottery chiefs said they were keeping secret the exact location of where the ticket was bought in order to protect the buyer’s identity.
Lottery chiefs’ big fear is the winning ticket may have inadvertently thrown away.
The winning numbers from the draw were 5, 15, 17, 37, 44 and the Lucky Star numbers were 7 and 11.
A National Lottery spokesman said: “This is the biggest ever unclaimed prize, so there’s been quite a lot of interest.
“If you were in this lovely location and popped into a store to buy a ticket, search your drawers, bags and those special places – it could be you!”
The £76,369,806 sum is the fourth EuroMillions jackpot won in the UK in 2018, and sits 12th on The National Lottery Rich List.
Andy Carter, senior winners’ adviser at the National Lottery, said it was on “standby” waiting for the ticket-holder that been to come forward. He said: “We’re urging everyone to try checking in the pockets of clothing, in wallets, bags, down the back of the sofa and anywhere a missing ticket could be hiding – someone out there could literally be sitting on a fortune. “We have the champagne on ice.” The Boston and Skegness constituency has a population of 101,684 with an electorate of 70,620 adults.
Boston is home to the nation’s highest of proportion of eastern European immigrants, making up 10 per cent of the population, while Skegness – famous for being home to the UK’s first Butlin’s holiday camp – attracts 4.5 million visitors annually.
The unsuspecting multimillionaire winner has until May 1 to claim the win. If he or she does not come forward, the prize money – plus the interest it has generated – will go to projects funded by the lottery.