Court stops Maltco from donating €820,000 in winnings from unclaimed ticket

The court has upheld an injunction filed by woman who claims to have lost her winning lotto ticket, in which she asked the courts to prohibit Maltco from donating her winnings.  

The €820,000 Lotto Quaterno+ jackpot was won on 18 May by a ticket bought from Qawra, but on 5 June, the operator issued a press release, explaining that the winnings had not yet been claimed.

It said that if the holder of the lucky ticket did not come forward by 17 July, the winnings would be donated to charity.

In a decree on Monday, the court said that it would be better if Maltco did not donate money at this stage, and upheld the request.

In her request to the court, the woman explained that she had been trying her luck by playing the same numbers for the last nine months. She said she would alwys take her old tickets to a Qawra point of sale to have them scanned and replaced with new tickets.

She said that it was shortly after she was discharged from hospital some time later that she realised she had misplaced the winning ticket, which she said, had been inadvertently thrown away with the “old batch of tickets”.

She insisted that she had indeed claimed the winning, first informally, then by means of a judicial letter dated 20 June 2019. This, she said, was followed by a court case which was filed on 8 July 2019.

Additionally, she said that she had also successfully obtained a warrant of description in order to retrieve IT data held by Maltco, which she said would strengthen her case.

The injunction was filed following media reports that Maltco intended to donate the winnings.