£58m lotto jackpot claimed at 11th hour

A MYSTERY lottery winner who only had hours left to claim a £ 8million jackpot has come forward.

They will pocket £ 7,879,670 – which would have gone instead to good causes after a deadline of midnight on Sunday.

The lucky ticket was bought in South Ayrshire in March as the country went into lockdown. Lottery chiefs said they were processing the claim.

The winner will join the list of the richest people in the country, ranking alongside stars such as Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe, Manchester United’s Paul Pogba and One Direction singer Zayn Malik.

A spokesman for lotto operator Camelot said: ‘We can confirm that we are currently finalising the validation of a claim made on this prize and are in the process of arranging for payment to be made to the ticket holder.

‘Once the prize has been fully validated and paid, we will issue confirmation of that, but there will be no further updates before then.’

Players are given 180 days to claim prizes but if nobody produces a lucky ticket then the cash goes to good causes.

This happened to a EuroMillions prize of £6 million in 2012.

Across all lottery games in 2018, £12 .1million went unclaimed.

Since the National Lottery began in 1994, there have been more than 00 millionaires made in Scotland, and more than

, 00 across the UK. The winners of Scotland’s largest jackpot, Colin and Christine Weir from Ayrshire, won £161million on EuroMillions in 2011.

Glasgow, Edinburgh, Motherwell and Aberdeen are the luckiest postcodes, being home to a remarkable 310 of Scotland’s National Lottery millionaires.

Glasgow is the place to live in Scotland if you want to scoop the jackpot, as 12 millionaires have been made since 1994.