Queensland Woman Claims to Be Winner of $2m Lottery Jackpot
Photo by Dylan Nolte
A Queensland woman is suing a lottery operator claiming she won a $2 million draw seven years ago.
The Courier Mail reports Kathy Jasmine Rado, 59, has filed a claim in the Supreme Court alleging that she picked the seven winning numbers and paid cash for the “winning” ticket at a Cairns newsagent on January 22, 2014, but can’t find her ticket.
The self-represented Ms Rado told the court that she lost her ticket in Gold Lotto draw 3315, but remains hopeful she might find it.
“This is a possibility as I am a self-confessed hoarder,” she said.
She told The Courier Mail that she even visited psychics to seek help to find the ticket.
Any faded lottery tickets she finds she is trying to read using a special light, she said.
Ms Rado did not register her lottery entry to a players card because she does not “like to put too much in the system.”
“I would just randomly pick and buy a ticket,” she said.
“I do not remember the exact time,” she said of her winning purchase.
“I did not know I had won till about a week later.”
She claims in court that she contacted The Lotto and told them she was a winner, but she had been rejected by them.
“This company has gone out of their way to give me a hard time,” she said.
“I have been told by professional people that it appears The Lotto have blacklisted me or written me off years ago.”
She has sued The Lotto, which is owned by $9 billion stock market gambling giant Tabcorp in a bid to get the court to force the company to reveal the details of the winning ticket.
She wants to use the details so she can “match this” to her recollection of her purchase.
She spoke outside the court and said The Lotto had given her and her son “three goes” each at guessing the time, date and type of ticket purchase and then they told her she had tried too many times.
She said the state’s Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation had investigated her claims but had been unable to declare her the winner and she had also taken her case to the Ombudsman.
“I go to the casino, I am a bit of a gambler,” she said.
She is buoyed by the fact that a Brisbane man who lost his ticket claimed his $23.2 million Powerball prize in 2007, nearly two and a half years after the September 2004 draw.
Ms Rado went to great lengths to find two customers who say they were in the newsagency when she bought her ticket, by leafleting every single car in the DFO car park.
Ms Rado said in her affidavit that she had a signed statement from an Australia Post office to say she visited the post office that day, but failed to get CCTV footage from DFO centre management and the nearby Coles supermarket to prove she was in the store that day.
Tabcorp has previously announced the winning ticket was sold at the NewsExtra newsagency in DFO Cairns and was worth $2 million and the winning numbers were 44, 3, 11, 42, 22, 26 with supplementary numbers 19 and 21.
Ms Rado said the numbers have special significance to her as her parents’ wedding anniversary and family birth dates.
She said she believes she has just seven years to claim the $2 million jackpot if she does not have her ticket, but this stretches to 10 years if she can find it.
