The mystery $55 million lottery win in Melbourne that’s been hanging in limbo since January has finally been claimed, a mere seven days before the Victorian Government would’ve been able to get their grubby mitts on it.
Officials at The Lott have confirmed the whopping prize has been claimed by an anonymous person, who more or less walked in off the street to present them with the winning ticket.
The gargantuan windfall went off on the January 11th draw, on a ticket bought at a newsagent in the Barkly Square shopping centre in the inner-northern suburb of Brunswick.
However, the ticket was not registered, which made tracking the winner down a case of waiting to see if anyone showed up to claim the literal mountain of cash.
If the prize had remained unclaimed for a further seven days, Lott officials would have turned it over to the State Revenue Office of Victoria, as the state’s lottery legislation currently dictates. From there, the Government would’ve been able to use the money as it saw fit. Although they would’ve had to cough the cash back up should the winner have come forward with the verified winning ticket at any point in the future. To that end, Victoria and Tasmania are the only states that don’t put time limits on claiming lottery wins.
Tattslotto officials issued a statement confirming the prize had been claimed earlier today, asserting that the winner had chosen to remain completely anonymous, which is the smart thing to do TBH.
Exactly who the winner is, where they’ve been and what they plan to do with their multi-million-dollar payday will forever remain a mystery as they have chosen to remain completely anonymous and celebrate in private.
Now that it has a home, the question remains: Just what exactly happened in those 175 days between the draw and the claim? Did the ticket go missing? Did they completely forget to check their results? Or was it one of those tasks that for whatever reason you just keep putting off and off and off and off.
Y’know… Trim the hedges, clear the gutter, consolidate your super, claim a $55 million lottery win.
Easy to see how you’d put that off for six months.
