The £7m Lotto loser
AN unlucky punter tonight lost out on a £7m fortune when the deadline for claiming a lottery win passed. As the clock ticked past 5.30pm the opportunity to claim the money waiting to be collected since last August disappeared.
It was the biggest lottery win not to be collected and the £7,039,469 - with £160,000 of interest which has built up since the ticket was drawn - will now go to the National Lottery Good Causes.
The unclaimed Lottery Extra ticket with its numbers 3,5,8,18,28 and 48 was bought in Belfast. The biggest lottery pay-out - more than £20m - was also bought in Belfast last summer and was claimed.
Organisers Camelot said some £10m more has still not been claimed from 2004 and urged people to check their old tickets.
Last June, a Belfast woman scooped the biggest National Lottery win yet - £20.1m. Cancer sufferer Iris Jeffrey, 58, bought the ticket last July just before undergoing treatment and it was more than six weeks before she realised she had won the jackpot when Camelot appealed for the winner to come forward.
Former Belfast bus driver Peter Lavery won more than £10m in 1996 and used it to build up a multi-million pound property empire.
