Time expires on $200,000 lottery ticket bought in St. Louis

ST. LOUIS -- Somewhere, there exists a $200,000 Powerball-winning ticket that as of now is completely worthless.

The winning ticket was purchased in May at a service station in the St. Louis suburb of University City. The holder had 180 days to turn it in. The deadline was 5 p.m. Monday, and no one came forward.

"Typically, people claim it pretty soon," Breanne Gibson of the Missouri Lottery told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "One time, a woman had put away her white pants for the summer. When she took them out again, she found the ticket and claimed it at the last minute."

This time, there were no last-minute heroics. Before the drawing May 9, someone picked up a ticket at a Phillips 66 station and matched all five white-ball numbers -- 2, 13, 30, 44 and 52.

Since August 2005, when the Powerball payout was doubled to $200,000 for those matching the five numbers, only two of 81 winners have failed to come forward. One of those tickets was sold in Moody, Mo.; the other in Eagle Rock, Mo.

The unclaimed winnings go into the state budget's education fund, where $79 million has ended up since July 2000, Gibson said.

The latest unclaimed prize isn't the most money ever left behind in Missouri. On Feb. 20, 1999, someone bought a $1.7 million Missouri Lotto ticket in Springfield. In Illinois, no one claimed a $14 million prize for a ticket purchased Jan. 31, 2004, in Frankfort.