A woman in California has come forward declaring to be the winner of the November SupperLotto Plus draw. She claims that the $26 million prizes are hers; however, she is not in possession of the winning ticket.
According to media reports, a winner of $26 million in the SupperLotto Plus has washed away her ticket. Now she shall have to prove the win to the lottery officials in order to claim what might genuinely belong to her.
The SupperLotto Plus ticket was bought in the Los Angeles suburb of Norwalk from a convenience store. The convenience store was eager to have the winner claim their prize before it expired. A deadline was set this week for the prize money to be claimed.
The purported winner of the SupperLotto Plus has not been named since the Lottery officials are still not sure about the genuineness. However, reportedly the mystery-winning woman was captured in the CCTV footage of the store at the time of purchase of the ticket.
According to the lottery officials, the winning prize has to be claimed within 180 days of the SupperLotto drawing.
The staff at the convenience store where the winning ticket was sold revealed about the woman in the Whittier Daily News of California. Esperanza Hernandez told that the woman visited the store claiming that the $26 million prizes belonged to her. However, she informed the staff member that she had mistakenly washed the ticket with her clothes, thus she was not in possession of the same. It is quite frustrating to win a lottery and then have no means of claiming what might genuinely belong to you.
Losing the ticket can make it quite difficult to claim the prize. Sometimes genuine winners have not been able to prove their credibility and the fact that they actually are the winners.
The California Lottery will have to go through a proper process in order to ascertain the woman’s credibility. According to the lottery officials, the CCTV footage of the store will not suffice. They need to investigate the matter and the woman needs to provide more cogent evidence to help strengthen her claim. While a copy of the footage has been handed over to the lottery, they will be investigating further for their own satisfaction. Such scrutiny is demanded from the lottery in order to ensure that the game is honest.
In case the winner is not proven and no one else comes forward to claim it then the prize will be donated. Usually, unclaimed prize money is used on education and to fund the public schools in California.
It is quite rare for lottery winners to not come forward to claim prizes in California since the competition is always tough.
While, it is still not confirmed who the winner of the $26 million is, the convenience store has a bonus of $130,000.