Local turns in winning Powerball ticket after four months

Friday, February 24, 2006 posted 03:38 AM EST

Never underestimate the power of cleaning.

Steve Jones, of Shreveport, swept out from under his bed Tuesday $853,492 in the form of a winning Match-5 Bonus Powerball ticket he bought on Oct. 16.

Thursday, Jones took the ticket to the Louisiana Lottery Corporation's headquarters in Baton Rouge and walked out with $597,447.20, after state and federal taxes were withheld.

"Someone had mentioned to me there was a story in the paper about the missing ticket," Jones said after returning from Baton Rouge. "I buy them all the time, and after he told me that, I went into the room I sleep in and started looking. I grabbed me a mop and went up under the bed and found three of them."

Jones took the tickets to the Thrifty Liquor location on Linwood Avenue, where he buys many of his lottery tickets, and a store clerk scanned them.

"The first two were nothing, but the third ticket said I needed to go the lottery office," said Jones, who felt no anticipation with the news. "I didn't know whether it was the Match-5 winnings or something else. But when they said I had to drive to Baton Rouge, I started looking for someone to drive me."

A friend and Jones made the trip, and even after receiving his check, Jones was not ready to make any big plans.

"Sometimes I win and sometimes I lose," said Jones, who also likes to visit the gaming casinos and purchases as many as $75 to $100 in lottery tickets at a time. "I'm not going to decide what to do with the money until I talk to someone who can advise me."

The retailer received $8,534.92, or one percent of the total prize, at the time of the drawing.

"We split the money between the employees working in the store," said Roland Toups, co-owner of the 12 Thrifty Discount Liquor and Wines stores. He remembers two other fairly large winning tickets sold at his stores. "They were in the hundred thousands, but not nearly close to this ticket's winnings."

Louisiana Lotto public relations manager, Kimberly Chopin in Baton Rouge, said it's pretty normal for people who win large amounts not to come forward the next day.

"They usually want to go see their attorney," Chopin said. "But when you're pushing four and half months you start to think either someone lost the ticket or they don't know they won. That's when we start getting the word out that there's an unclaimed ticket."

A story about the unclaimed ticket ran in The Times on Tuesday.

Jones' ticket was to expire April 17. Winners of the lottery's draw-style games, such as Powerball, have 180 days after the drawing to claim their prize.

Forty-nine ticket purchasers nationwide shared in the Oct. 19 Match-5 bonus prize pool of $32 million, including two others sold in Gretna and Gray. All Louisiana Match-5 winners from this drawing have claimed their prize.

Match-5 Bonus, added to Powerball in 2002, pays a bonus to players who match the five white ball numbers but do not correctly match the red Powerball number when a new record Powerball jackpot is surpassed. The bonus kicked in for the second time during the Feb. 18 record-setting $365 million Powerball drawing, in which two tickets sold in Lake Charles and Baton Rouge each won a $667,142 Match-5 prize. Those winners claimed their prize earlier this week.

The last time a large lump prize went unclaimed was the Feb. 6, 1999, drawing for a Powerball Match-5 ticket worth $453,000. That jackpot was actually split by two tickets, but one went unclaimed.

Jones, who works at Allied Waste, plans to keep his job for now.

"I told my supervisor I'd call him in the morning."

Related Links
	Latest Results
	Search Past Winning Numbers