Tick-tock, tick-tock, the clock is winding down for a pair of mystery lottery winners in Texas and Kentucky who, unless they come forward pronto, will lose out on a life-changing pile of cash. Each has a Powerball ticket worth a cool $1 million from a July 19 drawing, set to expire if not claimed by January 15, as KXAN has reported. With both ticket holders having matched all five white balls - numbers 7, 10, 11, 13, and 24 - they narrowly missed the Powerball number for the big jackpot.
Winning the lottery might seem as easy as picking numbers, but there is a ticking time bomb because these winners have just until 5 p.m. on the eve of Martin Luther King Jr. Day to lay claim to their fortunes. After the holiday, which happens to be on a Monday this year, any unclaimed prizes will revert to the respective states. For the lucky ticket holder in Texas, purchased at Big Shot in Houston, "We encourage our Powerball players to take another look at their tickets, and if your numbers match, sign the back of the ticket before claiming your prize at a Texas Lottery claim center," Gary Grief, executive director of the Texas Lottery, said in a press release obtained by KXAN.
Meanwhile, up in Kentucky, the winning Powerball ticket was sold at the Pilot Travel Center in Pendleton, with the windfall poised to support the Kentucky Educational Excellence Scholarship through the Unclaimed Prize Fund, should its purchaser fail to step up. "Someone holding a $1 million Powerball ticket rarely fails to cash it in," Kentucky Lottery President Mary Harville stated in a press release covered by the Courier-Journal.
Notably, while rushing to claim these prizes in a jiffy is a must, winners could still just sneak in under the wire through mail-in claims. But even here, fate's fine print kicks in, as the envelope must be postmarked by January 15. As Harville emphasized in the statement to the Courier-Journal, getting people to double-check their old tickets is a long shot, but it's one worth taking.
.jpg){kind=link}