Days dwindling for winner to claim $3.5 million Lotto prize

Wednesday, January 10, 2007 posted 02:55 AM EST

HARTFORD, Conn. -- The winner of a $3.5 million Classic Lotto prize has just over a month to claim the jackpot before the winning ticket becomes a worthless slip of paper.

However, Connecticut Lottery officials say they do not know whether the buyer even knows that he or she is a millionaire in the making. No one has come forward with the winning ticket or contacted lottery officials with plans to do so before the one-year deadline expires on 11:59 p.m. on Feb. 14.

"Folks put the tickets away and forget to look at them," lottery spokeswoman Diane Patterson said.

The winning ticket was sold for the drawing on Feb. 14, 2006, with the numbers 15, 17, 19, 26, 37 and 38.

Lottery officials are not disclosing the date and location of the purchase, or whether the buyer selected the numbers or chose a computer-generated Quick Pick ticket.

Almost 40 people filled out affidavits Tuesday claiming they purchased and misplaced the winning ticket, detailing when and where they purchased it in hopes of claiming the windfall.

"Our security department obviously knows the details behind the purchase, so they can quickly weed out which ones have the wrong town, wrong store, wrong date and those details," Patterson said. "We're very hopeful that somebody out there has that winning ticket and can find it and bring it in before the deadline."

Past winners have told of hiding their tickets in unusual spots - including one man who kept his $59 million winner in his car's glove compartment and a woman whose ticket smelled of the talcum powder container in which she'd hidden it from her paper-chewing dog, Patterson said.

Jackpots totaling $33.4 million have gone unclaimed since the Lotto game began in 1983. They include a $5 million windfall on an unclaimed ticket sold at a New Britain liquor store in 1995.

Patterson said some winners wait for the new year to claim big prizes - primarily for tax reasons - but that most claim their winnings at lottery headquarters within several weeks of the drawing.

The largest unclaimed lottery jackpot in Connecticut is $5.8 million, but the man who bought that winning ticket in October 1995 is hardly anonymous.

Clarence Jackson Jr. of Hamden, who tried to cash the ticket three days after the 1996 deadline, has won support from the state House of Representatives in his quest to have the one-year deadline waived, but the state Senate has rejected the appeal each time.

If the new $3.5 million jackpot goes unclaimed after Feb. 14, lottery CEO Jim Vance will determine whether to put the prize money in the state's general fund or use it to augment other lottery prizes or help pay for agency promotions, Patterson said.

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