$38M Lottery Ticket Claimed At The Last Minute In San Diego

SAN DIEGO, CA – A $38M dollar SuperLotto Plus jackpot ticket from all the way back in April was finally claimed on the final day before it expired, according to an ABC10 report.

The owner of the ticket, which came from the April 30, 2022 drawing, made their purchase at the 7-Eleven store on Spruce Street in the Bankers Hill neighborhood. They then waited until the eleventh hour before claiming their massive prize.

The ticket matched all six numbers from the April 30 draw. The winning numbers were 3, 15, 21, 35, 46 and the Mega number was 18. The prize was set to expire Thursday if it was not claimed, according to a news release from the California Lottery.

SuperLotto Plus winners have 180 days from the date of the draw to claim their prize. If the winner had not come forward by the deadline, the cash value of the prize, which is $22.9 million, would have gone to public schools in California.

The California Lottery has raised more than $1 billion just in unclaimed prizes since lottery tickets first went on sale in 1985.

The record for the largest unclaimed jackpot in the state is a $63 million SuperLotto ticket sold in Chatsworth in 2015.

In that case, the winning ticket was also sold at a 7-Eleven. A man named Brandy Milliner claimed to have the winning ticket and sued the state, but a judge ruled with the state lottery that Milliner's ticket wasn't the real deal.

"It's an odd situation," California Lottery deputy director Russ Lopez told Patch at the time. "We pay out $60 million a week on average, so we have a lot of claims. ... There were so many hoaxes, so many photoshopped tickets, so many claims. Anybody can make a claim."

The second-largest unclaimed jackpot was a $28.5 million ticket sold in 2003.

Largest unclaimed jackpots in state history:

• $63M (draw date 8/8/2015)
• $28.5M (draw date 9/10/2003)
• $26M (draw date 11/14/2020)
• $25M (draw date 1/8/2000)
• $20M (draw date 10/11/1997)

SuperLotto Plus drawings take place every Wednesday and Saturday. The odds of matching all five numbers and the Mega number is 1 in 41,416,353, according to the California Lottery.