"It was a comedy of errors."

By Kate Northrop

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — A New York woman has revealed that she was the winner of a $12 million Lotto jackpot that was never claimed in 1992.

A lottery jackpot on the verge of expiring prompts many players to rifle through their drawers or shuffle the contents of their car glovebox around, searching for that fateful ticket that could change their life forever. For one New York woman, however, she knew she had won even before checking her own ticket, but at that point, it was still too late.

Janet Valenti, 77, came forward to say that she was the one who missed out on a $12 million New York Lotto jackpot that expired over 30 years ago.

"It was a comedy of errors," the Staten Island woman told the Advance in an interview. "It went in the garbage."

It was one little mistake that led to the ticket's sad, unfortunate fate, and there was nothing she could have done to get it back.

On July 17, 1991, someone bought a Lotto ticket for $1 at the former J.N.J. Delicatessen in Graniteville. The ticket held the winning numbers for that evening's draw — 2, 3, 6, 43, and 51 — and had won the game's $12 million jackpot, but no one ever stepped forward to claim it.

Carolina Cutroneo, the deli's owner, told the Advance that she had spent the entire year following the win asking customers whether they had the ticket.

"I think somebody, when they saw they'd won, died or never found out in the first place," she had said at the time. "In the beginning, we were putting up signs every day, but no one came forward. It's probably somebody who really needs it."

New York Lottery spokesperson Bill Knowlton also told the Advance at the time that it could have been a visitor to the state or someone who wasn't used to playing the lottery in New York. He also explained that plenty of winners wait to claim a big prize because they're lining up an advisory team, or because they simply forget.

There was even one lottery winner who had waited three months to claim a prize because she had gone back to college and was studying for her finals, Knowlton said.

"She wasn't going to let anything interfere with that," he added.

According to Valenti, the winning Lotto ticket worth $12 million was sitting among other lottery tickets on an end table next to her couch in her home. She thought that she had already checked all the tickets that had been sitting there together. As she and her two teenaged children and mother were getting ready to head out the door to stay the weekend at a friend's house, she threw them in the garbage.

She spent the weekend blissfully unaware of the massive error, and it wasn't until her return that a friend reached out to remark that a winning Lotto ticket for $12 million had been sold in Staten Island.

That's when Valenti saw the winning numbers in the paper and knew she had won.

"Those are my numbers," she recalled telling her friend.

She knew they were hers because she always played the same universe of numbers, and that each one had special meaning to her, she explained to the Advance.

Sadly, it appeared the universe was against her this one, single time.

"My next-door neighbor, who has never in her life, the whole time I lived there, ever put my garbage out for collection, she did," Valenti said.

Valenti couldn't go digging in her garbage for the ticket because it had already been picked up by sanitation.

"That was the end of it," she relented. "Who thought anything of going to the dump at that particular time?"

She tried contacting lawyers, who said there was no way she could claim the prize unless she had that slip of paper in her hand. Not even obtaining surveillance video footage from the retailer would help.

"It didn't make a difference," Valenti continued. "There was nothing I could do."

The $12 million Lotto jackpot went by the wayside a year later on July 17, 1992 and was returned to the state lottery fund, becoming the then-largest unclaimed lottery prize in New York's history.

"I was a wreck," Valenti recalled. "I was sick for a long time over it."

At the time, Valenti was a single mother to her two teenage children, Kevin and Jennifer. Her husband, Bruno, had passed away in 1984.

While the idea of losing out on millions of dollars when it was just within reach might drive someone crazy, Valenti said what "saved [her] from losing [her] mind over" the incident was reading stories about "lottery curses," or infamous stories of winners whose lives changed for the worse after winning the lottery.

"Given that kind of money, things can go bad," Valenti reasoned. "That was a saving grace. Who knows what would have happened if I'd had that money? You read these stories, a lot of people win Lotto, they drop dead. Maybe it was [Bruno] looking out for us to not have that kind of money."

"I would have liked it now," she laughed. "Such is life. What are you going to do?"

Over 30 years later, Valenti is still playing the lottery.

"The most I ever get is a free play or a couple of dollars," she said. "That's it."

(Click to display full-size in gallery)Janet Valenti said she bought the winning ticket to a $12 million Lotto jackpot in 1991. A "comedy of errors" prevented her from collecting her winnings.

(Click to display full-size in gallery)Janet Valenti is seen here around the time she bought winning ticket for $12 million Lotto jackpot in 1991.