A Lotto winner in Australia has missed out on collecting their AUS$671,000 ($436,000) prize after running out of the time allowed to claim their winnings.
The successful Queensland lottery ticket was purchased in 2018 from Golden Lucky News at Westfield Helensvale in the Gold Coast shopping centre.
The lucky Lotto ticket scooped the AUS$671,513.12 prize and the clock began ticking on the seven-year period in which the holder could claim the money.
That deadline expired on August 11, 2025, without anybody stepping forward to collect their cash.
The system in Australia is similar to the USA lottery with draws carried out by individual states although there is a national draw, Saturday Lotto.
The Saturday Gold Lotto ticket was entered into Queensland draw 3867 on August 11, 2018.
It went on to match all the winning numbers: 1, 23, 8, 15, 44 and 20 with supplementary numbers 11 and 18.
A report released by the Grattan Institute last year showed that Australian gamblers have the highest losses per head in the world while data from the Queensland’s Statistician’s Office published in late 2023 estimated that Australians wagered more than $7billion ($4.57 billion) on lotteries in the 2020-21 financial year.
Sydney Powerball Winner Yet To Claim AUS$100m
The third-largest lottery prize in Australian history remains unclaimed two months after the draw.
The winning Powerball ticket landed a jackpot AUS$100 million ($65 million) in draw 1517 on June 12, but the owner didn’t register that ticket to an account.
It was purchased from Bondi Junction Newsagency and Internet Cafe in Sydney, and after a public appeal failed to track down the winner, The Lott officials have even resorted to checking CCTV footage in an attempt to trace the reluctant millionaire.
Had the owner registered their ticket with the Lott Members Club they would have been contacted straight away with details on how to collect their winnings.
One theory is that the winner may have been a tourist or backpacker who has since left the region and is unaware of the potential fortune waiting for them.
The prize can only be claimed in Australia.
While the Queensland lottery allows players seven years in which to claim their prize, lottery winners in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory have six years from the draw date.
Winners in Victoria have to get their skates on as they have just 12 months to act, otherwise the prize money transfers to the state government.
Australia’s Other Missing Million-Dollar Winners
The largest unclaimed lottery prize in Australia so far is AUS$4.8 million ($3.12 million), which has sat untouched for over four years.
The Set For Life jackpot was the result of a draw in April 2021 but the owner of the entry bought in Woden, Australian Capital territory, has not stepped forward.
There are 24 major Australian lottery prizes that have not been claimed, worth an estimated AUS$21.42 million ($13.9 million).
Jim Munro is a betting industry and gambling expert who has been a national newspaper journalist for over 30 years, predominantly at The Sunday Times and The Sun, where he wrote a weekly soccer betting column. Jim also worked on the launch of Virgin Bet with Gamesys and was subsequently head of editorial at LiveScore, the sports media and betting group.
