LOTTERY LOSER: YOU’RE RICH, BUT YOUR NUMBER’S UP

Some lucky lottery winner is about to become unlucky.

A $100,948 winning Fantasy 5 ticket, sold at a Winn Dixie supermarket in Lakeland, will expire Saturday because no one has claimed the prize within 180 days.

The ticket is among three that will expire this month. A Fantasy 5 ticket worth $44,685 will expire at midnight Monday. It was sold at a Circle K in Palm Coast, south of St. Augustine.

Someone else will be out $24,452 if a Fantasy 5 ticket sold at a Pik N Run in Port Charlotte, in southwest Florida, is not claimed by midnight Sept. 21.

Those are nowhere near the largest prizes to go unclaimed.

The biggest loser was the person who let a $53 million Powerball ticket expire in 2003. In October 2015, a $15 million ticket sold at The Beer & Liquor store in Lake Worth went unclaimed.

Since December 2009, 76 people have lost out on Fantasy 5 tickets worth more than $600 each, Florida Lottery records show.

The money from expired tickets goes back to the state. Florida law requires 80 percent of the winnings to go toward an Educational Enhancement Trust Fund, and 20 percent goes back into a pool for prizes.

That’s different from every other dollar collected from the lottery, which puts about 64 percent toward the prize pool and just under 30 percent toward the education fund, said Connie Barnes, communication director for the Florida Lottery.

The rest goes toward a commission for the retailer who sold the ticket, vendor fees and operational costs, Barnes said.

Barnes said people let tickets expire for a number of reasons.

“Sometimes people buy multiple tickets and forget about them. They could also misplace it,” Barnes said.

Wednesday night, a lottery ticket bought at a Publix outside Boca Raton was a Fantasy 5 winner, worth $208,175.

It was the only ticket to match all five numbers: 10, 12, 19, 28, 31.