Can you claim a lottery prize after the deadline? Man waits 19 years to collect $5.8 million
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A Connecticut lottery winner has spent the last 19 years trying to claim his $5.8 million jackpot prize.
Winner Clarence Jackson believes he is entitled to the sum even though lottery officials told him that the ticket, bought on Oct 13, 1995, was now worthless.
The persistent Hamden man told the Hartford Courant that it was ‘extenuating circumstances’ that led him to turn in the winning ticket three days after the deadline had passed.
Jackson's sister, Sheila Cole, saw an Oct. 13, 1996 newscast that the prize had not been claimed and that was when the family realized the ticket was a winner.
She went looking for old tickets in her parents' house and one of those she found was a winner, said state Rep. Ernest Hewett, introducing a bill: H.B. 5924, "An Act Concerning Late Submission Of Claims For Lottery Prizes,"
"The only problem was that it was now 11:15 on a Sunday night. It was just 45 minutes before the deadline. All that Clarence had to do was to go to any store and have the ticket validated. He did not know that though. He thought that all he had to do was go to the Lottery Office the next day."
The next day was Columbus Day and the lottery was closed. The day after that, Jackson learned his ticket was now worthless.
2015 wasn't the first time that Jackson has tried to lobby the legislature to let him claim his prize.
A 1997 bill failed, as did amendments in 2004 and 2006.
Anne M. Noble, the lottery's president and chief executive officer said in her written testimony that the proposed law presents numerous problems and sets a dangerous precedent.
Since 1996, there have been $252 million in unclaimed prizes.
"It will open the floodgates to claims that the Lottery must pay a prize, even when the rules plainly prohibit such payment ... a Pandora's box," she wrote.
