Punters miss $50m in prizes

Whakatane Paper Plus owner Judi Norman has $291,179 waiting to be claimed. Photo / Troy Baker

Kiwis are missing out on a $10 million goldmine in unclaimed Lotto prizes each year, despite unprecedented efforts by the Lotteries Commission to trace unsuspecting winners.

Figures released under the Official Information Act show people have missed out on $50million in the past five years, mainly in special draws.

Already this year tickets worth at least $250,000 have been sold in Auckland, Whakatane, Hamilton and Christchurch.

The commission does everything possible to find winners, including issuing wanted posters.

One Gisborne woman was shocked to find a grainy picture of herself plastered on a wall in her local supermarket last October. The poster read: "New Zealand Lotteries is very interested in speaking to this woman."

"The way they put it, it looked like I'd stolen something," said Mary, who withheld her last name.

She was tracked down after Lotteries bosses learned an unclaimed ticket worth more than $30,000 had been sold at the Gisborne Pak'n Save.

They identified the winner after cross-checking the time the ticket was bought with store camera footage.

Mary was one of four people who claimed to be the mystery buyer. All claimed they had lost the winning ticket.

But after a month-long verification process, including checking bank records and assessments of Mary's distinctive sneakers worn in the surveillance footage, she received a $31,500 cheque just before Christmas.

Mary said it was a case of being saved by the surveillance society: "God, yes, it's like 1984, isn't it?"

Lotteries Commission spokeswoman Karen Jones said the organisation went to great lengths to find winners before their tickets expired.

Prizes unclaimed after a year are put into a fund that is added back into the prize pool.

The biggest outstanding ticket, worth $291,179, was sold by the Whakatane Paper Plus in March. Store owner Judi Norman said she asked all her regular customers to check their pockets.

"It would be great if we knew who it was."

This week a Dunedin man claimed $410,001 after his wife urged him to check old tickets sitting in his wallet.

And last month a Ponsonby man claimed a $509,937 Lotto prize the day before his winning ticket would have expired.

Richmond Rd Superette owner Manhar Patel said the half-million-dollar man had since visited the place where he bought his ticket.

"He came in with a bunch of flowers. He's very happy and lucky, but one day later it would have been a sob story."