Lost tickets equal lost millions for unlucky lottery players

Imagine winning the lottery. You check, double-check, scan your ticket on your app or in the store, and finally understand that you’ve won the jackpot. The piece of paper you paid two dollars for while filling up your tank is now worth millions.

And then, when it's finally time to trade that piece of paper for more money than you ever imagined, it's gone. Lost. Vanished. You check your wallet, look under your couch, search through your car, and even dig through the garbage, but there's not a trace of it.

While you may think it's impossible to lose something as life-changing as a winning lottery ticket, the truth is that it happens more often than you'd imagine. One moment, a player is a multi-millionaire, and the next, they're clocking in to the same job they thought they were about to quit.

These are true stories of people who lost winning lottery tickets and never saw them again.

Half a fortune

The December 2023 Mega Millions drawing will probably go down as one of the strangest in the game's history. The normal part was that there were two winning tickets. The strange part was that the two tickets were purchased at the same retailer, a Chevron gas station in Encino, California, a city just outside of Los Angeles.

The odds of two people buying the same ticket from the same store and both picking identical winning numbers are astronomical, and things only got stranger when one of the winners showed up to claim the $395 million jackpot.

Faramarz Lahijani arrived at the California state lottery offices with a winning ticket and a strange story to tell. He claims he bought both tickets in separate transactions but lost one.

Lottery officials told him that because he had only one of the two winning tickets, he was only entitled to half the prize, $197.5 million. However, Lahijani claimed he was entitled to the entire prize, and just a few days before the other ticket was due to expire, he filed a lawsuit against the California Lottery, demanding payment of the full prize.

However, just as Lahijani's lawsuit was working its way through court, the story gained yet another twist. A woman named Cheryl Wilson stepped forward and claimed that she was the rightful owner of the missing ticket, but her employer (not Lahijani) had stolen it from her. She too filed a lawsuit demanding the second half of the prize.

Eventually, a judge put an end to the chaos. According to California law, a physical ticket is the only way to collect a lottery prize, and without it, both Lahijani and Wilson were completely out of luck. Case dismissed.

And that's not to say there was no happy ending to this story. Lahijani still collected almost $200 million, and the unclaimed half of the prize went towards California public schools.

California Lottery spokesperson Carolyn Becker stated:

While it's a shame for potential winners to see any winning ticket expire, it does give a helpful boost to California public schools.

$100 million mystery

Somewhere in Australia, a man or woman is working in their office or on a job site, dreaming of what life could be like if they could retire and pursue their passions full-time. Maybe they want to travel the world, create art, or just sit on the beach and watch the sun go down every night.

That person may never know how close they were to achieving that dream because, for one reason or another, they never stepped forward to collect the $100 million The Lot jackpot, the country's third biggest lottery prize ever.

In June 2025, Australian lottery officials eagerly awaited the winner's arrival to claim the prize. And they waited and waited and waited, but no one ever came for the prize.

Lotteries don't get people excited by not giving away money, and it didn't take long for officials to launch an intensive hunt for the winner, but the only information they had to go on was that the winning ticket was purchased from the Bondi Junction Newsagency in Sydney, New South Wales. After that, it was a dead end.

The Australian Lottery, known as The Lott, does allow players to register their tickets through The Lott Members Club, which means they can alert winners and keep track of who has the winning numbers. This player never registered their ticket.

A year after the drawing, the winner has still not been found, and officials admitted that while prizes sometimes go unclaimed, no one could think of another time when a jackpot of this size went unclaimed.

Damaged goods

There was no gold in the Golden State for Los Angeles resident Brandy Milliner. In February 2016, he claimed that he was the legitimate winner of the California Lottery's $63 million SuperLotto Plus jackpot. He told reporters that he even received a letter from the lottery congratulating him on his big win.

That's why it stung all the more when he received a second letter from the lottery stating that his ticket was too damaged to verify and that he would not receive the prize.

Rather than settling for a form letter and a photocopy of his damaged ticket, Miliner filed a lawsuit demanding that he be declared the rightful winner and that the lottery return his damaged ticket to him so he could attempt to reconstruct it.

For their part, a California Lottery spokesman said they had no record of Mr. Miliner either making a claim or being rejected for a lottery prize, and they denied that he could be considered a winner.

Lottery official Alex Traverso added, "[There] wouldn't be a letter congratulating him on his win. The lottery doesn't issue congratulatory letters. We issue checks."

Lottery Officials made an all-out effort to find the real winner and launched a publicity campaign to alert the public to the outstanding winning ticket.

The California Lottery stated in a press release:

If by some miracle you happen to find this extremely valuable piece of paper, the California Lottery urges you to sign your ticket in ink and get it to one of our Lottery District Offices.

Ultimately, a judge dismissed Miliner's lawsuit, the 180-day window expired, and no one claimed the $63 million jackpot.

Lost and never found

When Watford, UK resident Martyn Trott heard the winning numbers for the National Lottery in 2001, he didn't need to check his ticket because he had played the exact same numbers in every drawing for years.

However, when Martyn went to get his winning ticket, he realized that he couldn't find it. His mistake launched the 36-year-old purchasing manager on a crusade that would cost him more than just his fortune.

After not finding his ticket, Martyn appealed to Camelot, the company that runs the National Lottery, and asked that they declare him the winner. This is where the second cruel twist occurred for him.

Camelot said that while they had a record of his purchasing the winning ticket, they could not award him the prize because he missed the deadline to report a lost ticket. According to the rules, a player must register their lost ticket with Camelot within 30 days of the drawing, or it's considered ineligible for a prize. Martyn was outraged that he would lose a fortune because of an arbitrary rule, and he not only sued Camelot but launched a national publicity campaign to bring attention to the unfairness of the decision against him.

Soon, he attracted some major supporters, including billionaire Richard Branson and Prime Minister Tony Blair, but despite his high-powered help, Martyn couldn't overcome one powerful fact: the rules were the rules, and he couldn't break them even if they were unfair.

Martyn's wife, Kay, tried to move on from the loss, but he simply couldn't let it go. He tried everything he could to get his fortune and was so distraught that he even briefly joined an American cult. He explained to reporters:

Having that money taken away was torture. For a long time, I lost sight of who I was and what I believed in. There is no guarantee it would have brought me happiness.

Sadly, the stress of losing the ticket caused a breakdown in Kay and Martyn's marriage, and they divorced. Martyn remained obsessed with his lost fortune and even wrote a book about his experience called 6 Magical Numbers.

No good deed goes unpunished

Pennsylvania resident Mildred Simoneriluto stopped by her local Shop n' Save in Murrysville and purchased a Cash 5 lottery ticket, an in-state draw game with a seven-figure prize. She placed the ticket in her jacket pocket, where she thought it would be safe.

Two weeks later, the 72-year-old realized she had the game's winning numbers and her ticket was worth $2.5 million. She rushed to get the ticket from her jacket when she had a horrifying realization: she had donated it along with some other old clothes to the charitable organization Vietnam Veterans for America.

"I was stupefied; there are no words for it, there's no expression. How can I get it back?” she told reporters. She contacted her local lottery office, but they told her she must have physical possession of the ticket to claim her prize.

While she did try to retrieve the jacket after donating it, Vietnam Veterans for America told her that they distribute clothing all over the world, which meant it could be literally anywhere.

Simoneriluto still tried searching their local inventory for it, but had no luck. She told reporters that she was particularly disturbed by the idea that someone else could find her lost ticket and claim the prize themselves.

What else can I do? Cry out loud and hope that something will happen positive [sic] on my end.

Happy endings

While no lottery can help you find a lost ticket, many can use advanced techniques to reconstruct damaged ones.

North Carolina is one of the top states for ticket reconstruction, and officials there claim they reconstruct around 500 tickets a year.

In one case, a man threw a winning ticket into the trash because he thought it was a loser. After double-checking, he discovered that it was a $1 million winner, but a giant tear made it hard to read. He brought it to the lottery offices anyway, and officials went to work reconstructing his damaged ticket.

Ultimately, they were successful, and the man collected his million-dollar prize.

In another case, an Oregon couple, Rachel and Nathan Lamet, mailed their mutilated ticket to the state lottery office and asked for help putting it back together after their Alaskan Klee Kais dogs, Apple and Jack, chewed it up.

Fortunately, officials reconstructed the ticket, and the Lamets were awarded their $8 prize.