More than $20 million slipped through the fingers of B.C. lotto players in last decade
Credit to Author: Matt Robinson| Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2019 00:31:37 +0000
Be they lost in the recesses of purses, wadded up in the lint bins of dryers, or trapped between the cushions of couches, winning lottery tickets don’t always find their way to prize money and glory.
If you’re someone who tends to lose things, and lottery tickets in particular, you may want to brace yourself before reading any further. That is because more than $20 million in lottery winnings went unclaimed and expired in B.C. in the last 10 fiscal years, according to BCLC.
Looking at national games Lotto Max, Lotto 6/49 and Daily Grand alone, $19.7 million in prizes has been unclaimed since April 1, 2010. That small fortune is not comprised of a stack of $5 or $10 winnings, either. It includes unclaimed tickets to two $1 million Lotto Max Maxmillions prizes and a pair of $1 million Lotto 6/49 wins, according to the lottery corporation.
Peter Graf, a professor of psychology and cognitive scientist at the University of B.C., took a shot at answering the big question as to why so many people seem to lose or forget to check their tickets. Part of the answer comes down to understanding two primary types of buyers, he said.
“If you compare the people who are regular buyers, the frequent flyers, I would assume they have a nice little system where they buy them and stick them in a fixed place so they know where they are,” Graf said.
“And then I assume the people who lose or forget about their lottery tickets are the more impulse buyers (who) walk by a store, see $65 million available and then buy a ticket. Those people probably don’t have a place to store their tickets.”
Buyers in the latter camp may find themselves doing things like using lottery tickets as bookmarks, only to rediscover them well past their stale date, Graf said.
Plans or systems can help people avoid losing or forgetting things, Graf said. But it’s not enough to simply tuck a ticket that’s bought on a whim into a random, top secret hiding place. That doesn’t tend to work well with Christmas or birthday presents hidden away from prying eyes, and it certainly doesn’t work with little pieces of paper.
More than $2 million in national prizes from tickets purchased in B.C. have expired in this fiscal year, according to BCLC. And since April 1, 2018, another nearly $1.2 million in winnings from regional lotteries Extra, BC/49 and BC 50/50 have expired, according to the corporation.
As of Oct. 16, there was a single unclaimed 6/49 winning ticket from the Oct. 2 draw that was bought in Richmond and is worth about $252,000. There is also one unclaimed Lotto Max winning ticket from July 26 worth more than $105,000. It was also bought in Richmond.
Lottery winners have up to one year from the draw to claim their prizes, according to BCLC. Unclaimed cash goes back into the pot.
Last year, Kamloops man Darcy Hickey bought a ticket for the July 6, 2018, Lotto Max draw and tucked it into his wallet. When he finally checked his numbers three months later he learned he’d been packing around a $1 million winner.
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