The 4 Biggest Lottery Fails Ever!

You can buy all the lottery tickets in the world, but if you don’t check them they’re as worthless as a wooden nickel. 

In Australia, millions of dollars in lottery money remains unclaimed! While you may be the luckiest person to score the winning numbers, you’ve got some pretty rotten luck if you are unable to claim your prize.

There are plenty of people in the world who have completely forgotten about their lottery ticket or lost it and failed to collect their prize! 

Here are 4 of the unluckiest lottery stories that will make you double-check those lucky numbers. 

The lucky person that failed to collect

One unlucky American won a whopping AUD$21.3 million in prize money but failed to collect their winnings in time for the six month deadline.

The numbers 4, 14, 22, 24, 28 and 43 were called on the 5th of June 2018 and after the 180 day period, the prize money was still unclaimed. 

As part of a state statute, the millions of dollars went towards community partners and future prize winnings. 

The men who threw away a million-dollar ticket 

Salvatore Cambria and Erik Onyango became some very unlucky lottery winners when they missed out on claiming a whopping $1.29 million!

Onyango bought three US Powerball tickets and gave one to Cambria. When they checked their numbers and received no luck, they threw them away. 

It wasn’t until later Cambria realised he had checked the results from the previous draw and that today’s draw was showing the 6 of the 7 numbers on his winning ticket. Unfortunately, it had been carelessly discarded! 

The pair searched high and low, tracing the whole garbage truck route and even hired personnel to try and look for the winning ticket. Again, they didn’t come up lucky and the winning ticket went unclaimed. 

The couple that missed out on AUD$320 million due to a glitch 

Rachel Kennedy  missed out on becoming AUD$320 million richer when her payment didn’t successfully go through on the winning lottery ticket she had purchased. 

The 19-year-old student had played the same numbers for 5 weeks in a row and had even received an alert saying she had won! While she spent the following days overjoyed at her newfound fortune, she was devastated when she got the news she in fact did not win. 

Despite having the right numbers, because of the lack of funds in her account to buy the ticket it didn’t go through, leaving her with a bank account as full as it had been before. 

The lost ticket

Martyn and Kay Tott  realised six months after purchasing their ticket that they had won AUD$5.4 million. However, by the time the couple saw an appeal to come forward, they couldn’t find their lucky ticket. 

While the ticket was missing, the couple were certain they had won since they had been using the same numbers for weeks and they perfectly matched the jackpot numbers.

Computer records showed they had really purchased the ticket, however lost tickets must be reported within 30 days. 

After 45 days of deliberating, the couple didn’t receive the cash. Sadly they spent the following five years fighting for their payout but were never able to get their hands on the prize money. 

For a chance to win sign up to play with The Lottery Office today! When you purchase one of our lottery tickets, we’ll purchase a matching ticket in an overseas lottery. If you win, we’ll collect the prize money locally and pay you the exact same amount.

After reading these stories, you will be happy to know that we check your tickets for you and let you know about any winnings. Additionally, you cannot lose an electronic ticket once you have purchased it in our matched online lotteries.

Share this via: