$52M Lottery Prize Officially Declared Unclaimed

Somebody in Canada had the best of luck, followed by the worst of luck. They bought a lottery ticket with the winning numbers for a jackpot of $70 million Canadian dollars—around $52 million US—and then apparently either lost the ticket or forgot about it until it was too late. The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation says the Lotto Max ticket sold on June 28 last year has been officially declared unclaimed and the money will go back into the prize pool, the CBC reports. The OLG says the ticket was sold in Toronto's Scarborough district and there was a province-wide effort to find the winner.

The ticket expired a year after it was sold. The OLG says almost 2,700 people came forward to claim they had lost the ticket. "Due to the high volume of lost ticket claims, OLG's dedicated team of lottery investigators took the time necessary to thoroughly review each and every potential claim," the OLG said in a press release. "Now that this process is complete, we can report that none of those claims were successful." OLG spokesperson Tony Bitonti told CTV this is the largest unclaimed lottery prize in Canadian history. He said the ticket was probably thrown out by mistake or left in the pocket of a pair of jeans. (More lottery stories.)