Just one day before their winning lottery ticket turned into a scrap of worthless paper, a North Carolina couple has come forward to claim their big million-dollar prize.
Erin and Raleigh Hill of Stallings, N.C., had held onto the winning ticket for months, despite lottery authorities' desperate attempts to locate the winners. Raleigh Hill, a baggage handler, told Lotto officials that when he learned he had won, he waited weeks to tell his wife Erin, who works for the federal government.
Finally, when she had a bad day, he said he casually shared the news of their windfall, telling her, "Things aren't all that bad."
As the months ticked by, Erin encouraged her husband to redeem the ticket, but fearing "hoopla," he stashed it away in everything from a Bible to a shoebox, lottery officials said. At one point, he even worried that he had lost the ticket, forgetting where he had put it.
"When she brought the subject up, I'd always say, 'We'll talk about it,'" Raleigh said to lottery officials today as he and his wife picked up their prize. "It wasn't about the money. It was the attention... I was overwhelmed. Nervous."
If the couple hadn't come forward, their good fortune would have meant nothing.
In a quest to find the new millionaires, the N.C.E.L had placed a banner sign up at the store where the ticket was sold asking "Who's Got the Million Dollar" ticket. The ticket was sold at Market Express on 2800 Old Monroe Road in Matthews in Mecklenburg County. The time line on Mega Million winnings is 180 days from the drawing.
"We really want the person who won this prize to get the winnings," said Van Denton, director of corporate corporations at North Carolina Education Lottery, before the Hills emerged. "This person had some great luck and they deserve this prize."
It wouldn't have been the first time that a prize went unclaimed. In Texas, one unlucky lotto winner failed to collect a prize worth $4.1 million.
"It happens often," says Gail Howard, the author of "Lottery Master Guide." This is why lottery players should "check their tickets right after the drawing because you could have a nice prize waiting for you."
But, why is it so common for lottery tickets to go unclaimed?
"I think it's more that they were too busy or too lazy to check their ticket," says Howard. "Then days went by and it went out of their mind."
If the Hills had waited too long, their $1 million prize would have been divided equally between the lottery's education fund and, to an unusual benefactor, Medicaid. The lottery intended to direct funds to a Medicaid shortfall instead of the typical allotment for prizes for players in 2011.
"Celebrating winners is one of the most fun things we do at the lottery and we hate to see prizes go unclaimed," wrote NCEL Executive Director Alice Garland.
The kerfuffle brings to mind an incident two years ago in the state when a man nearly lost out on $200,000 because his unchecked lottery ticket was left sitting on his dresser. It took the prompting of a friend who heard of the dwindling timeline for the ticket owner to realize he was the lucky winner — less than two days before the expiration date.
The nearly five-year-old lottery system has seen 16 tickets go unclaimed. That's at least four tickets a year — remember we're not in year five, yet — where winners have failed to claim anywhere from $100,000 to $800,000. Since N.C. began its lottery system, nine of the unclaimed tickets have been Powerball winnings and seven of the unclaimed tickets have been Carolina Cash 5 tickets. The state's largest unclaimed ticket was a Powerball ticket for $800,000 in April 2008.
How do you lose out on millions? "Maybe they very seldom buy tickets and they're not in the habit of checking their winning ticket," says Howard. "They might assume they have a losing ticket."
That could have been the case in 2002 after a future millionaire 51 times over lost out on the fortune after failing to claim a $51.7 Powerball ticket sold in Indiana.
"People that win often look forward to checking their ticket," Howard says. "But, even if someone knows, and they put it in a very safe place, they might forget where that safe place was."
Congrats to the Hills , enjoy your good fortune.
WOW!!!! cutting it close...congratulations to the Hills........
geez i was thinking it was lost, instand it was insane and fearful? player....
cease who the hell would pass up Claiming it asap for freaking interest!, hes lost, is the lottery bank account gain LOL
i understand jackpot winners taking just about 2 full weeks before they claim it....
sense the lotterys say it takes about 2 weeks total for ever state in the pb/mm games to transfer their share of jackpot prize pool they collected to the state where the winners are,
who then pays/wires the money to the winner, so sense your not getting the cash for 2 weeks anyway even if you claimed next day
, may as will take your bloody time for them 2 weeks
, so why not wait and get your lawyer ,trust whatever setup etc
but small 2nd place prize can be paid it with a check near instant , once the paperwork at hq done.....
if anything, he bring onto him self More media,by making people aware their was a 1m winner, HES plan has backfired, hes bring more media onto himself. what a genius........
and i hope he didn't any debts... such as car/house payments interest he could of avoided by out right paying them off asap , instand of waiting so long to do it
what was he thinking?
"am to scared of the public finding out, am going to site here, wait to the last min and claim....."
oh will, am glad he got the money and Not the state , the state should never get back unclaimed prizes, they should find a way to put it back into some prize pools......... sense the states already got their share form SALE of the game/tickets/whatever
plus he paid for a 2 buck ticket so he deserves that 1million prize and not 250k form a normal win of 5-0 hit on mm
am going to put this down as:
how being overwhelmed and Nervous can make you lose Future Income by frezing up in fear, a lesson to future lottery winners!
lottery winners will indeed keep me guesting at what they do next LOL
The Mr. of the pair acted badly....imagine when the publicity dies down. It's only a million I don't think he has to worry about it too much. What
new creature will he turn into having the money in his hands? He will probably bury it in the yard somewhere and forget where he put it.
There is no sense in letting worry run your life. Maybe that's what happened to the $51 millioin dollar winner, they might have worried and
stressed themselves to death.
So now, there is even more publicity!
Smart !?
Ok I like to keep my comments positive, but in this case ~~~What a freaking Dumb A.....! I am sure he is like the most of us living paycheck to paycheck, no doubt the pair have had days where they pinched pennies. If I was the partner I'd be mad as hell, how you gonna wait this long for a million dollars. Something just either fishy about his reasoning, or just stupid. But its my opinion, and his right to claim whenever he wants to.
They're lucky it wasn't a leap year.
Mr. Raleigh Hill is "FULL OF SH**!!! This man is a drama filled moron!!!
You have a million dollar ticket and you B.S. around in cashing it in?!!!
I expect the Hills to forget where the money is deposited after they cash in the ticket.
I hope Erin is manager of the finances because this drama king is a piece of work.
She encourages the idiot to cash in the ticket and he.........!!!
She asks about it and he brushes her off??....... He is too stooopid to have a million dollars!!!
Besides winning a million dollars in the Mega Million or Power Ball is not that news worthy. Happy to burst his bubble on that score.
You win a million dollars.... Big WHOOP.......
Win the jackpot on Mega Millions or Power Ball now that's news...
Erin HIll, you are a strong woman to be married to a drama king like Raleigh.....
As the months ticked by, Erin encouraged her husband to redeem the ticket, but fearing "hoopla," he stashed it away in everything from a Bible to a shoebox, lottery officials said. At one point, he even worried that he had lost the ticket, forgetting where he had put it.
"When she brought the subject up, I'd always say, 'We'll talk about it,'" Raleigh said to lottery officials today as he and his wife picked up their prize. "It wasn't about the money. It was the attention... I was overwhelmed. Nervous."
If the couple hadn't come forward, their good fortune would have meant nothing.
Some of the readers do not consider this article to be newsworthy, it's only a million dollars! Some of you may remember when a million dollars was a jaw droping event. Now, if the lottery ticket was worth...$200 million, there would be all kinds of negative comments. Anyway, the best of luck to the couple.
$500,000 would be jaw droping to me.
A rare occurrence for me in this story: a word I have never heard of before:
kerfuffle
hmmm ... what lucky numbers does kerfuffle conjure up?
Yea Erin need to do a background check on this Mr. Nervous man she is married to he has a lot of skletons in his closet.....Unpaid child support ex wife(s) FBI fufitive, your imagination is of this story ending is really the thesis,,,,
It is newsworthy. One million dollars today is nothing to get so whacked over. The husband seems to have some issues...hiding the ticket, not
telling his spouse, worrying about what it would do to his life, changing hiding spots so often he almost forgot where it was?? Huh? Why play in
that case?
I don't understand your remark - If the lottery ticket was worth $200 million, there would be all kinds of negative comments...why? Okay, after
chewing on that one for a second, the only remark I could see myself making is THANK GOODNESS they finally came forward and the prize will
be awarded to a winner and not a program.
If you want a negative comment, I might have added...The Mrs. might want to be careful with all that money, she might wind up in a hole right
beside the money somewhere in the backyard if it was $200 Million. $1 Million drove him to be secretive, $200 might have driven him over the
edge.
What the majority of posters to this story fail to realize, is that it's THEIR money and how they go about claiming it is their business and not ours.
I understand everyone has their own opinion on how they do things and thats fine, but it's THEIRS not ours or yours. Why so much negativity, It's their business.
Would'nt it just suffice to wish them Good Luck and be done with it???
Maybe other people would'nt handle things as they did for 180 days, but how you handle it would be YOUR business and no one else's .
I wish the hills, good luck in their endevours regardless...!
Yes, dr65, winning $200 million might drive him to the brink of madness!
Paranoid much?
Im glad they claimed it, but it would have been the funniest thing if they he found the 'lost' ticket 1 minute too late.
I can definitly use a powerball jackpot win tonight!!!
Good luck with your winnings Mr and Mrs Hill.
I'm Happy for the Hills.But they were pushing it to close to the deadline !!!! I'll never wait until I have 24 hours before I claim my winnings... Good luck to all !!!!!!
gotta admit, if their life is so perfect they can sit on $1M for a year ;or how ever long, good on em. personally i couldnt do it.
but hey they're happy.
can u imagine of mr hill had had a heart attack in the intervening time, and forgot to metion where the ticket was to Mrs?
or a stroke, face all hanging and unable to speak, and only 24 hours to claim!
no siree, id claim it ASAP. but its their choice. but im glad it worked out for em
That was not very smart. Supposing something happened to them yesterday and things became so overwhelming that they completely forgot about the ticket.
3 months wait = genius
364 days wait = what are you thinking!!!
The time line on Mega Million winnings is 180 days from the drawing.
I'd wait a while, too, but the part that I really don't undertand is when he forgot where he put it. I can't remember where I put things Ihaven't used for several weeks or months on a regular basis, but none of them have been worth anything remotely close to 300 grand.
Actually, in PA you have 1 year.
It is on the back of the ticket!
Couple reluctantly steps forward to claim lottery winnings
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You'd think that the news that you'd won the lottery would galvanize you to pick up the check--and probably quit your job--with all deliberate haste. Not so for North Carolina lottery winners Raleigh and Erin Hill of North Carolina who waited until the day before the ticket expired to cash on their winnings.
Even though they learned of their good fortune a few weeks after the Aug. 20 announcement of the winning North Carolina Mega-Millions lottery ticket, the Hills put off claiming the proceeds from their million-dollar winning ticket. Instead they spent the next six months or so hiding the ticket away in an assortment of places--inside a Bible, a shoebox, an envelope and a work locker.
Why the delayed gratification? It certainly wasn't the case that they live in such opulence that they could take or leave their winnings. Raleigh, who bought the ticket, is a baggage handler, and Erin works for the federal government. No, it appears that the couple was haunted by a sense of unease over the many families who've won a lottery windfall only to see it destroy their lives and relationships.
Raleigh was so fearful of "the hoopla," in fact, that he waited several weeks before telling his wife that he had the winning ticket. And then one day, when she was fretting about having an awful day, he let her in on his secret. "Things aren't all that bad," he told her after leaving the winning ticket on her computer screen.
Indeed, public reticence now seems to be the new vogue among big-ticket lottery winners. Last month, Holly Lahti, a 29-year-old single mother from Idaho, came forward to claim "a $190 million Mega Millions jackpot, but vanished just as promptly from the public eye after the nine-figure payday had passed.
However, Lahti had some distressingly concrete reasons to retire from the spotlight. According to press reports, she had never divorced or legally separated from her long-estranged husband, Josh Lahti--potentially entitling him under state law to a share of her winnings. The couple had both been arrested in a 2003 domestic dispute, and John Lahti reportedly had several run-ins with the law for alleged physical abuse of his wife.
As for the Hills, they took their money in a lump sum, each receiving $340,000 after taxes. At a press conference to announce the winnings, they hinted that they might use the money to buy a new house and take a trip to Ireland, where Erin's ancestors hail from. At which point, presumably, they will resume their lives in comparative anonymity.
(Photo: North Carolina Education Lottery)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110216/ts_yblog_thelookout/couple-reluctantly-steps-forward-to-claim-lottery-winnings/print
You are correct! I live in PA and I always thought it was one year so I just checked the back of my Mega Millions ticket and it is one year in PA.
& now ................. about $40,000,000 after Federal Taxes when I win on Saturday ............ uh, & I will claim mine long before the 1 year is up in Pennsylvania!
Maybe in PA,it is 1 year, but this happened in NC and it's 180 days..
There was a case, years ago, where a couple won a multimillion dollar jackpot, celebrated pretty hard that night and forgot where they hid the ticket. A few months later the wife was redecorating the daughters bedroom and found the ticket taped to the back of a picture. I think they vowed to give up drinking.
when it's printed in a news story,
it is OUR business.
and talking about what to do with the ticket if we won
is also our business.
0 for 2 maddog.
"back of a picture?"
i'd fold the ticket up and stash it inside the dusty o' computer tower.
nobody ever looks in there. lol
Who is "ours"
You need to go back and read what was said before you open mouth and insert your foot any further Cosmo.
Open your eye's and read. The comments were directed at the hills for doing it their way, not for everyone that was going to do it their way.
My comments were directed at those who were conducting their thoughts of what the Hills should have done not their business..
Maddog 3
Cosmo -1
Since your the scorekeeper.
Something seems strange about this...there is no way he would be giving me the brush-off.....please !!!