Most of us share the dream of being a lottery winner. While winning sounds like a dream, realising you’ve won after it’s too late sounds like a nightmare. This is exactly what happened to one lucky (or unlucky) person who won back in March 2019. So now, the unclaimed lottery prize of £1,000,000 has officially passed its claim period.
According to The National Lottery rules, lottery winners have 180 days from the draw date to claim their prizes. The draw in question is Lotto Draw 2421 drawn on March 6th, meaning that their 180 day period was up September 2nd.
The National Lottery states that the East Riding of the Yorkshire region is home to the winning ticket. The winner matched five numbers plus the bonus ball and the winning numbers were 2, 12, 15, 43, 46, 53 and the bonus ball was 17.
While there are hundreds of big lottery winners every year, dozens of people never claim their prize. For the remainder of September 2019, there are still two large prizes whose claim periods are about to expire. The first must be claimed by Wednesday the 11th and is a £146,939.20 prize from EuroMillions draw 1198. The second is a whopping £1,000,000 EuroMillions prize from draw 1203 which must be claimed by September 29th.
What Happens to Unclaimed Lottery Winners Prizes?
The National Lottery puts every unclaimed lottery prize back into the community via their National Lottery Good Causes program.
This program has helped fund over £40 billion in projects to date. They include the recent upgrade of Wembley Stadium, Social Bite (a not for profit sandwich shop that puts funds into supporting the homeless) and many more.
How to Find Out if You are One of The Unclaimed Lottery Winners?
So you have a bunch of tickets you need to check? You can check a list of every unclaimed lottery prize at The National Lotteries unclaimed prizes page. Unfortunately, this page doesn’t show all unclaimed prizes, only the major ones. Alternatively, you can check historical results on our lottery results page.