"You've got to be in it to win it." That's New York State's lottery slogan. Unfortunately, many people aren't really in it when they buy a ticket. They buy it on a whim when the prize looks inviting, and then they never check back to see if they've won. Many people, with the exception of expert lottery players, buy tickets praying for a payout. However, they have no real system for keeping up with things. Life intervenes when they get home, kids are screaming, the spouse needs dinner, they have to work late, and the ticket goes on the back burner. The back burner turns into the forgotten ticket and an unclaimed prize sitting in the junk drawer or in a pants pocket is now their new reality. The current statistics of Ny lottery winners who have failed to claim their prizes to date in 2007 is in the millions. Winners missed a total 4.84 million in prizes that expired between April 1 and May 31st of 2007, and that statistic is just for prizes that were more than $10,000 each. This fact is according to John Charleson, a New York lottery spokesman. Tracking is less available for smaller prizes, but if this is any indicator, then lottery money is being reabsorbed into the Ny state coffers at record levels, due to unchecked ny lottery results. In Westchester alone there have been 11 unclaimed prizes of more than $10,000 from various lotto games, Rockland has two unclaimed prizes so far this year, and Putnam has two. All these tickets were bought in the last year were and Lower Hudson Valley has the largest unclaimed prize about to expire in the amount of $250,000. The lottery ticket was sold in Mount Kisco, and if the winner knows about it, how long do you think it would take for them to get to the prize claims office. Unfortunately, people think their odds of wining are low. The odds of winning the Mega Millions Jackpot are 1 in 175,711,536, and the odds of winning the $250,000 second prize are 1 in 3,904,701. As a result, they give their ticket low priority on keeping up with and checking to see if they've won. What is saddening about these statistics is that people put down their hard earned cash for a chance at a dream, and then through bad memory and bad luck, they win and never realize it. In New York winners are given 12 months to claim their prizes; after that, the money goes back to the Ny Lottery to create new games. For some, like the unlucky winner who bought a Mega Millions jackpot ticket worth $31 million at Astoria Smokeshop & Convenience in Queens on Aug. 1, 2006, their ticket is now worthless. Can you imagine that poor person when they realize they had $31 million dollars at their disposal for 12 months and never acted to receive it. Connecticut has a story that is food for thought about the perils of being late turning in your ticket. It concerns this poor guy named Clarence Jackson Jr. He won a jackpot in the amount of $5.8 million dollars in 1996 and turned it in three days late. He spent subsequent years trying to lobby the state legislature to make an exception in his case so that he could get his prize. To date he has never received a penny. That means that all those tickets unclaimed in Westchester, Rockland and Lower Hudson have people facing a similar fate. The above statistics only cover a two month period. While it might not be $5.8 million, money won is still somebody's money.
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