LOS ANGELES (AP) - California Lottery officials said Friday that nobody has stepped forward with the winning ticket for the record $63 million SuperLottoPlus jackpot - but it's too early to call a forfeit.
No one had produced a verified claim or "actual, legible" winning ticket a day after the 5 p.m. deadline had passed, lottery spokesman Alex Traverso wrote in an email.
"We're still looking into claims. I would expect this process to go on into next week," he wrote.
"Most everyone who came in to file claims, per my understanding, all said they lost their ticket," Traverso wrote.
"Again, it's worth noting that in the time I've been with the lottery, all the big winners I've ever talked to have one thing in common - they guard their winning tickets with their life," Traverso wrote.
One man has filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles, contending he supplied the winning ticket but lottery officials told him it was too damaged to be credited and haven't returned it. He is asking a judge to declare him the winner.
If it's found that no genuine claim was made before the deadline, the largest state jackpot in history will go to the public schools.
The winning ticket was sold on Aug. 8 at a 7-Eleven store in Los Angeles. The winning numbers were: 46-1-33-30-16 and the Mega number: 24.
Lottery officials had sent out repeated calls for the winner to contact them, and media coverage ramped up as the six-month deadline to claim the jackpot dwindled to days and then hours.
The previous largest unclaimed California Lottery prize was $28.5 million. It's harder to determine the largest unclaimed prize for a lottery game in U.S. history, but one must certainly be the $77 million Powerball jackpot won in Georgia in 2011.
A California winner also has not come forward to share in the Jan. 13 multistate Powerball prize of $1.6 billion. Two other winning tickets were sold in Florida and Tennessee, but only the Tennessee winners have claimed their cash so far.