Lotto Jackpot Mystery Winner May Be Loser

The clock is running out for the $4-million mystery man--or woman--of the California State Lottery.

Last Jan. 17, someone bought a lotto ticket at the bustling New Wah Lun Co., a grocery store in the heart of San Francisco’s Chinatown. That ticket turned out to be one of four winners of the $15.9-million jackpot the next Saturday, but no one has yet turned it in to claim that share of the prize--$3.98 million.

If no one makes a legitimate claim by Friday at midnight, $2.1 million will revert to the state education fund, which is the main public beneficiary of the lottery.

(The education fund would not get the full $3.98 million because multimillion-dollar lottery payoffs are paid in multi-year installments. The $2.1 million represents the initial investment that, with interest, would total $3.98 million over the full pay period.)

Lottery officials know where and when the winning ticket was purchased, because such information is recorded on the lottery’s central computer. But names and addresses of ticket buyers are not recorded. Instead, ticket holders have to turn in their receipt within six months of purchase to claim their prize. So far, the Jan. 17 ticket buyer is the only lotto jackpot winner to fail to claim the prize, according to Bob Taylor, a lottery spokesman.

In an effort to find the winner, lottery officials have conducted two press campaigns directed to mainstream and to Asian media, Taylor said. The last occurred on July 9. But so far no claims, not even illegitimate ones, have been made, he said.

A trip to the New Wah Lun Co. reveals no clues there to the identity of the ticket holder.

Mei Hua Li, who worked at the store’s lottery kiosk when the transaction took place, said that Jan. 17, shortly before the Chinese New Year, was a particularly busy day.

Throughout the day an impatient line persisted in front of the kiosk.

“Everyone was out trying their luck before the New Year, hoping for something that would change their life,” Li said. “Practically anyone could have bought that ticket.”

Of course, rumors about the missing multimillionaire abound in Chinatown. One story has it that the winner was an old Chinese woman who washed her clothes in a local coin laundry and was left with a handful of wet pulp, said Paul Lee, the owner of New Wah Lun.

Another tells of a man who bought the winning ticket, misplaced it and became so upset about the loss that he became violently ill and disappeared, Lee said.

Lee, whose store sells an average of 1,500 lotto and scratch-off lottery tickets a day, said the lucky combination of 13, 20, 28, 35, 36, and 21 may well have been picked by a tourist from Hong Kong. But he added that about 20 of his regular customers have lamented about the loss of “their” $4-million ticket.

“It has become kind of a joke around here,” he said.

According to Taylor, the $3.98 million represents by far the largest unclaimed prize in the lottery’s 21-month history. However, it is not the largest amount of unclaimed lotto money in the country. At least one other state, Pennsylvania, is still waiting for the winner of $9.2 million to show up.