How much money goes unclaimed in state lotteries?
While we couldn’t find an exact figure, columnist Al Tompkins of Poynter Online estimates that hundreds of millions of state lottery dollars go unclaimed every year. This seems entirely reasonable, considering the net amount of money involved. According to the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries, during the last fiscal year, U.S. lottery sales totaled $44.9 billion. To pick one state (albeit a big one), this table from LottoReport.com reports that last year, Texas had $72 million dollars of unclaimed state lottery prize money. California had roughly $38 million. Florida governor Jeb Bush awarded a single unclaimed $30 million dollar ticket to his state’s languishing e
