$1.35m lotto ticket went unclaimed for 10 months...
Then a man checked his jacket pocket
It was a chilly Montreal day last December when Gregorio De Santis bought a lottery ticket, worth maybe even less than the paper stock it was printed on.
He tucked it away in a jacket pocket and forgot to check the lottery numbers on December 6, when a drawing netted $5.4 million (US) across four winning tickets. But at least one-quarter of that prize — about $1.35 million — went unclaimed. Winter slid into spring, followed by summer and its fading warmth.
At some point, De Santis’s sister urged him to clear out his old clothes and donate them, the lottery commission, LotoQuebec, said. He tucked his hands into a liner pocket and felt the ticket.
It was worth a shot to look if he won a few bucks, De Santis told the commission. He checked the ticket at a store’s display, and it lit up with a four-digit number. He celebrated what he thought was a win of more than $1,000. Then he began to realise that there were a string of zeroes attached to the end. It nearly gave him a heart attack, he said. His improbable win was a product of timing. Winning tickets are valid for up to a year, according to Loto-Quebec’s rules — so De Santis had only about two months left to discover the ticket before his prize was gone forever.