$50 million Florida Lotto jackpot goes unclaimed

Coralie Carlson

Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2003 | 9:24 a.m.

NORTH BAY VILLAGE, Fla. -- People daydream endlessly about what they would do if they won the lottery. The Big One. Millions and millions of dollars. Vacations. New house. New cars. Early retirement.

But what would you do if you had the winning ticket for a $50 million dollar Lotto jackpot and let it expire?

No one redeemed the winning ticket for a $50 million Lotto jackpot by the Tuesday deadline, making it the largest jackpot in Florida Lottery history to go unclaimed.

But Hasan Bayezid still came away a winner.

Bayezid works at the Kohl's Food Market and sold the winning ticket. Although the ticket holder didn't claim the jackpot, the store claimed its $10,000 prize for selling the numbers.

And Bayezid returned Friday from a monthlong vacation to Bangladesh that was paid for by the prize, given to him by his brother, the store owner.

Now, back behind the register at Kohl's and again doling out lottery tickets to a steady stream of customers, he banters with two elderly women who ask him for better scratch-off tickets than he sold them last time.

"I gave someone $50 million, and they didn't want it," Bayezid tells them with a laugh.

The deadline to redeem the ticket was 12:01 a.m. Tuesday. The winning numbers for the March 12 jackpot were: 22-23-35-45-50-53.

Now the money will be returned to the lottery and used for promotions or prizes.

"Who could it possibly have been?" asked Susan Kobrin, an interior decorator in North Bay Village who bought a Lottery ticket Tuesday at Kohl's. "I just can't imagine buying a ticket and never checking it, unless it was an out-of-towner or something like that."

This is the 20th Lotto jackpot to go unclaimed since the game started in 1989 -- and it's by far the largest. The other forfeited prizes ranged from about $2.4 million in 1997 to $15 million in 1991.

At least one larger lottery prize has gone unclaimed in the United States.

One of two winning tickets for a $103.5 million Powerball jackpot went unclaimed in 2002, said Joe Mahoney, spokesman for the Multi-state Lottery Association. Powerball, the nation's largest lottery game, is sold in 24 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The ticket, worth $51.7 million, was bought at a convenience store near the Indianapolis airport. Powerball officials think the ticket may have been left in a rental car by a business traveler.