A man from Ontario, Canada, whose vehicle was robbed last week now fears the thieves may have made away with a lottery ticket worth CAD$ 1 million.
Peterborough resident Mark Smith is a regular customer at the Bailieboro gas station in Otonabee-South Monaghan and often buys a couple of Canada Lotto 649 lottery tickets while he is filling his tank.
When he popped into the station on Friday, July 11, 2014, he picked up a couple of tickets for the July 12 drawing, left them in his car and forgot to check them after the draw. Normally this would not be a big deal, but when Smith climbed into the car on Monday morning to head for work he realized his vehicle had been robbed.
The only missing items were some loose change and the two tickets and Smith was not particularly worried about either until the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG) announced a CAD$ 1 million ticket had been purchased in Peterborough, but the holder had not stepped forward to claim the prize.
"When I heard [the announcement] on the radio, I immediately started thinking 'Could it be one of the tickets that was stolen?'" Smith said, but added he takes comfort in the fact that, should someone try and claim the prize, he can prove he is the ticket's rightful owner because he used his MasterCard to buy one of the tickets. He paid for the second ticket by cashing in a free play ticket and signed the back of the ticket he traded in.
