7 Eleven shop where Irvin Przyborski bought the ticket
Not said in vain that someone born to be lucky. Sometimes that fortune can come in later years as in the case with Irvin Przyborski, 61, a retired truck driver.
Irvin Przyborski was looking through some papers so he could do his annual tax return when he saw the year-old winning ticket he had bought from a convenience store. He wouldn’t even have been going through the documents if he hadn’t decided to file his tax return a few weeks earlier than normal. He was doubly lucky because he had just nine days left to claim the prize of $9 million.
He had bought the Lotto ticket with the winning numbers 5-20-31-34-50-51 in March at a 7-Eleven store. The 7-Eleven shop where he bought the ticket would have still received a one per cent bonus of $90,000, regardless of whether he had claimed it or not.
The Lotto ticket was in among a number of other tickets he had put into a file, to check the numbers when he got around to it. The others were mostly worthless, but the winning one was the largest unclaimed prize in Illinois history. When Mr Przyborski found it and realised he had become a millionaire, he called his attorney who in turn phoned lottery officials and claimed the prize for him.
He was taking it all in his stride, though and showed a concern for people not so lucky. When asked about his huge winnings, he told the Chicago Tribune: “What’s the big deal? It’s not even worth putting in your paper. It’s like watching paint dry. Look at the people who are out of work. People with doctorates can’t find work. There’s nothing joyful about winning money in a situation like this.”
We never get this close to a ticket this large going unclaimed, a lottery spokesman said. This would have been the largest unclaimed ticket we’ve ever had by far.
If Przyborski had not claimed the cash, it would have been donated to the Illinois state education fund. The fund gains about $2 million each month from unclaimed Lotto prizes. [Daily Mail]
