Winning Arizona Lottery Ticket Worth $14.6M Goes Unclaimed: Where Is The Winner From?

A whopping $14.6 million in prize money from Arizona lottery has gone unclaimed. The jackpot ticket was sold on June 5 in Goodyear, Arizona. The claim was due until December 2 at 5 p.m. But the winner never turned up and there is no clue about the person’s whereabouts.

This is the largest prize ever in Arizona that went unanswered.

The procedure for earning the lottery prize was explained by John Gilliland, Arizona Lottery public information officer to CNN: “To claim any prize of $600 or more, a winner needs to sign the back of their ticket and come to one of the Arizona Lottery's offices.”

Gregg Edgar, executive director of the Arizona Lottery expressed disappointment that the prize money went unclaimed. In a statement, he said, Arizona Lottery has been excited about awarding a large jackpot $14.6 million as a prize but regretted it went unsolicited.

Although it is not uncommon for winning tickets going unclaimed, prize money of this scale not having a recipient is very rare.

According to Fox News, the lucky Pick ticket was sold at a Circle K gas station in Goodyear. It said the winning numbers were 4, 14, 22, 24, 28 and 43.

Prize money to be disbursed among organizations

If the prize money goes unclaimed Arizona Lottery is entitled to distribute the funds to different organizations.

Many state programs will also get funds including games, abused children initiatives and education of Native Americans, per NBC news.

“These dollars will be utilized now to enhance our player’s experiences with future games and fund a variety of beneficiaries that have a tremendous impact on our community,” Edgar said.

How the lottery helps cash-starved people was borne by an incident reported in October. A cancer patient in North Carolina won $200,000 from a lottery ticket purchased while going for his last chemotherapy treatment.

Ronnie Foster said he would use part the money for medical expenses and said he was happy because he was receiving his final round of chemotherapy, according to BBC news.

For states, the revenue from the lottery is a big source of funds to back social sectors including education. An example is Florida Lottery whose to-date contributions have surpassed $36 billion to the state's Education Enhancement Trust Fund.

From that corpus, more than $11 billion has gone to Florida's public schools while state universities and colleges, received more than eight billion dollars.