New York Brothers Wait Six Years to Claim $5M Lottery Win

When people win a big lottery prize normally players make a claim for their winnings in the first few weeks for fear of losing their winning ticket. However, it has emerged that some lottery winners from American waited a lot longer than a few weeks to claim their prize. Brothers from New York waited six years in total to claim their $5 million lottery win but not because they lost their ticket but because they didn’t want this win to have a negative influence.

This lottery win wasn’t on the popular American state lotteries the Powerball and Mega Millions but on a lottery scratchcard. The winning scratchcard was purchased by one of the brothers, Andy Ashkar 34, in 2006 at a store that his parents run. He then decided to share the winnings with his brother Nayel Askhar, 36.

As this win wasn’t on a lottery such as the Powerball or Mega Millions in which the prizes expire between 90 days and a year, scratchcard wins only expire a year after the game in question closes. Therefore these brothers just made it in time because they claimed their win 11 days before the top prize would have expired – talk about cutting it fine!

The reason behind why they waited so long to claim their winnings is because one of the brothers didn’t want the win to effect his engagement and marriage. Also they has to wait because when a winning ticket is purchased by someone who is related to the owner of the store all wins have to be checked which took several months in this case.