Kathryn Jones is an engineer from Hamilton. Last November, she bought a $16 lottery ticket from a Shopper’s Drug Mart in Cambridge. That ticket turned out to be the winning slip in a $50 million Lotto Max drawing. And unfortunately for Jones–she promptly lost it.
Luckily for Jones, officials at the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation took the initiative to find her. When they did, they showed up at her door and set about helping her prove that missing winning ticket actually belonged to her, launching an investigation that included an intensive interview process, viewing surveillance footage from the Shopper’s where she says she purchased her ticket, and examining credit card records to see if her records matched the timing of the ticket sales. It all checked out.
“We’ve conducted a comprehensive prize claim review and collected indispultable proof to dermine Ms. Jones as the identified winner,” Rod Phillips, President and CEO of the OLG, told the assembled media on Monday.
Still, that wasn’t the end of this miraculous ordeal. Jones triggered further review when she informed OLG officials that her sister owns a retail outlet that sells lottery tickets in a town near Ottawa.
The review finally wrapped up last Thursday, leaving no major barriers left between Jones and her $50 million dollar prize. Now all that is left is the regulated miniumum 30 days the OLG will take to publicize her victory. Provided no one comes forward to dispute her claim, the cash is all her’s.
When asked how she felt when she first realized that the OLG was pursuing her because they suspected she won the $50 million prize, Jones said, “Holy mackerel, this is weird.”
That much is not in dispute.
(via: Globe and Mail and CBC)
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Jordan Sowunmi is a writer and editor at the Toronto Standard. He is on Twitter: @jordanisjoso
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