ROCKVILLE, Md. — One Marylander's luck is about to run out on a big cash prize from a historic lottery victory. And they'll have ten million reasons to double-check those tickets before trashing them in the future.
A Powerball 'Double Play' winning ticket worth $10 million has yet to be claimed from the Rockville location where they bought it back in September of last year. Players have 182 days -- or about six months -- to claim their prize, so they only have until the end of the month to cash in.
Carole Gentry, managing director of communications for Maryland Lottery and Gaming, confirmed in a statement, "The claiming date deadline is March 28. So, it’s fast approaching."
According to Gentry, if the prize goes unclaimed, the money is put back into an unclaimed prize money fund, which is then turned into additional prizes for other players.
The Rockville store that sold the ticket has their own luck, however. The retailer gets a $10,000 bonus from the MD Lottery for selling the winning ticket, even it is not claimed.
According to Maryland Lottery data, this would be the biggest unclaimed prize in years. Two separate $1 million prizes have gone unclaimed in the past few years.
The $1 Double Play add-on feature, which 13 U.S. lotteries began offering on Aug. 23, gives players a second chance to win on their Powerball tickets. Tickets with the Double Play feature are eligible for both the Powerball drawing and a separate Double Play drawing.
Montgomery County’s Rockville Exxon at White Flint located at 11433 Rockville Pike in Rockville sold the winning Powerball Double Play ticket, which matched all of the numbers in the Sept. 27 Double Play drawing: 2, 27, 51, 62 and 66; the Powerball was 1.
The unclaimed ticket would be the first Double Play top-tier prize won in the nation.
The biggest winnings in Maryland Lottery history were the $731.1 million won by a group of coworkers in 2021 in Lonaconing, MD.