WCLC: $20-million lottery ticket still unclaimed in Manitoba

If you’ve got an imagination, you’ve probably wondered what your life would be like if you won the lottery.

The Western Canada Lottery Corporation says there’s a $20-million winning lottery ticket purchased somewhere in Manitoba waiting to to be cashed in.

The winning ticket is from the August 24 draw, according to the Director of Communications Corporate Affairs for the WCLC.

Kevin Van Egdom says they can’t release any information about the ticket other than the numbers. He says they’re not allowed to share where the ticket was bought because that information is used to verify the winning ticket when it’s finally brought in.

“In a lot of cases, people find the winning ticket and they get in touch with us as soon as they can,” Van Egdom said

“But it’s also 20-million dollars so we have people who are seeing that and saying ‘this is going to be a big change in my life’ and they want to take a little bit of time. But we’ve seen both sides of that because there are people who use their lottery ticket as a bookmark.”

But the big money ticket isn’t the only outstanding winner. Van Egdom says there are currently three draws waiting for their winner.

“There’s one ticket worth a little over $191,000 so that’s a nice little chunk of change for sure and that’s from the Lotto Max draw on September 22 in 2020. We’ve got another one with a not a lot of time on it and it’s a Lotto 6/49 ticket from August 14 of this year worth $10 million.

According to Van Egdom, all three tickets were purchased in Manitoba, but outside of Winnipeg. He says there isn’t really a normal waiting period for the winners to show up and his team is used to waiting a long time for people to claim their tickets because nothing about winning the lottery is normal.

“We had a woman a number of years ago who won $4 million and she had her ticket in her purse but the handle broke so she threw the purse in the back of her closet. She ended up claiming the prize 11.5 months after the draw.”

The numbers for the winning $20-million ticket are 1, 24, 26, 29, 30, 45, 50.