The Top 5 Biggest Lottery Tickets That Went Unclaimed

Winning the lottery is a dream for many people around the world. Countless tickets are sold each week, each representing a sliver of hope for the holder — that a windfall of a life-changing sum of money could be just around the corner. Players imagine that winning the lottery could mean quitting their job, buying a big house and a nice car (or fleet of them), and living in luxury for the rest of their lives. No wonder people are drawn to buying tickets, despite the unimaginably long odds.

The truth of the matter, of course, is that winning the lottery isn't always as wonderful as it appears to be. Experts note there are several pitfalls that jackpot winners can fall into. Many have reported alienation from family and friends, while some studies found that bankruptcy rates among the lucky few are far higher after winning than they are among everyday working people. Among the potential culprits are poor money management and a lack of financial guidance. The list of lottery winners who lost all their money makes for grim reading.

Nevertheless, it isn't the corrupting influence of money itself that many lottery winners fret about. Instead, it's the cold horror of having a winning ticket, but either through loss or sheer forgetfulness, never claiming their winnings at all. And as the following cases of the world's biggest unclaimed lottery prizes show, the unthinkable does sometimes happen.

A record-breaking unclaimed lottery ticket was drawn in California in 2015. Purchased from a 7-Eleven on August 8 that year, the numbers were 46-1-33-30-16 and the Mega number was 24, returning a prize of $63 million. The ticket purchaser had until February 4, 2016 to make their claim and receive their prize money, but despite the eye-watering amount, no one came forward.

The hunt for the oblivious winner hit fever pitch in the days before the deadline, with reports on ABC and other news channels assisting the lottery organizers in uncovering the person in question. Of course, the appeal of such news stories is that viewers wince at the idea of being so unlucky as to win the lottery and forget to claim the prize. "If by some miracle you happen to find this extremely valuable piece of paper, the California Lottery urges you to sign your ticket in ink and get it to one of our lottery district offices," read an official statement (via CBS News). Unfortunately, the deadline passed with no verifiable claim or any trace of the winning ticket, and the prize money was instead invested in California schools.

Many lottery tickets have gone unclaimed down the decades, but 2002 was the year that one such winner broke the $50 million mark. An unknown player in Indiana bought the ticket through PowerBall, a competition run by Hoosier Lotto that operated in 23 states across the United States at the time. The deadline to claim the prize was March 13, 2003, 180 days after the draw, and as the date approached, organizers began running commercials and holding public events to publicize the outstanding prize in hopes of uncovering the unwitting winner. But the cut-off came and went without anyone showing up to claim.

However, it turned out that 2002 would be a bumper year for unclaimed lottery jackpots. That lost win was soon dwarfed by a $68 million Mega Millions prize from a ticket bought at Kings Plaza Newsstand in Brooklyn, New York on Christmas Eve that year. Again, the deadline passed with no winner coming forward. A man named Fritzner Bechette later sued the New York Lottery, claiming to have been the purchaser despite not being able to produce a ticket. The court ruled against him.

It would be nearly a decade before the New York Mega Millions loss was dwarfed by an even larger unclaimed lottery prize. This time, the ticket was bought in Tallapoosa, Georgia from a Pilot Travel Center. The purchaser struck gold with five winning numbers and a Powerball match in a drawing held on June 29, 2011.

Nobody came forward to produce the winning ticket, and after 180 days, news outlets shared the frustrating news that the deadline had expired. It was described as the largest prize to go unclaimed in the state since lotteries were introduced in 1993, becoming arguably a bigger story than the prize itself. Though in Powerball rules, unclaimed winnings go to participating states, in accordance with Georgia rules, the unclaimed $77 million was returned to the prize fund for lottery players in the state. But it wouldn't be long until the record was again broken.

The following year, the record for biggest unclaimed lottery prize was eclipsed again. This time, the winning ticket was bought in the United Kingdom for the Euromillions draw on June 8, 2012. The pan-European lottery is drawn twice weekly and requires players to match five numbers and two Lucky Star numbers to hit the jackpot.

Two winners won the top prize, one in Belgium and one in the county of Herefordshire, England, each winning £64 million (around $102,000,000 million at the time). However, the latter never stepped forward to present their ticket before the deadline lapsed after 180 days. Their identity remains a mystery.

It remains the biggest unclaimed lottery prize in British history, and the third largest overall worldwide. The unclaimed funds were then distributed by the National Lottery to various charities and social projects throughout the U.K. via National Lottery Good Causes, which has raised a total of £50 billion (around $63 billion) as of this writing since it first began back in 1994.

On March 26, 2024, an unknown person entered a ShopRite Liquor store in Neptune Township, New Jersey, and bought a Mega Millions lottery ticket. The player matched five white ball numbers and the gold Mega Ball, making them the first winner of the year after months of Mega Millions rollovers. As such, it became one of the biggest prizes in lottery history — a staggering $1.128 billion.

The $1 billion mark has been broken six times in Mega Millions history, all of which have come since 2018. However, at the time of writing, this is the first billion-dollar draw that remains unclaimed. After taxes, the winner would walk away with $536.6 million. The deadline for it to be claimed comes a year after the draw: March 26, 2025. Though some argue that it sucks to win the lottery, losing out on a billion dollar prize is surely worse.