An amazing story of a Hamilton woman who bought a winning $50 million ticket in November 2012 and then more or less just forgot about it. She didn’t check to see if she had won and in all that time never gave the outstanding jackpot much thought. Then, after a meticulous investigation, the OLG “detectives” came knocking on her door. Kathryn Jones, a 55-year-old engineer from the Hammer was formally announced today as the winner of the $50-million Lotto Max jackpot that remained unclaimed for almost a year. Jones, who purchased the ticket at a Shoppers Drug Mart in nearby Cambridge, where she works, said she lost her ticket and had no idea she had even won until OLG officials launched an investigation into the unclaimed prize. “As you can imagine this has been a very weird and wonderful journey,” Jones said during a press conference to announce her as the winner. “I feel almost as though I have been struck by lightning twice,” she added. OLG President and CEO Rod Phillips said the organization received more than 430 inquiries regarding the winning ticket since it was sold last November. He said the OLG undertook a comprehensive investigation to verify that Jones was the rightful winner of the multi-million dollar jackpot. Among the elements of the probe, CCTV video from the drug store showing Ms. Jones buying her ticket at the same moment her credit card records said she did. The actual ticket was lost, so these forensic findings were crucial to confirming Ms. Jones as the winner. There is a large unreported and unexplained aspect to this story. It would be relatively easy to do the verification work once Ms. Jones was identified. But how did OLG identify her?. It seems a long shot that she was known to personnel at the drugstore, even when they saw her on camera. More likely, it seems, is that Ms Jones paid by credit card and it was possible to obtain a name and address from the card issuer.
