Triple Lottery Win Still Unclaimed

Three identical Mega Millions lottery tickets were sold

Someone is sitting on not one, not two but three winning Mega Millions tickets.

Five identical Mega Millions lottery tickets, now worth $204,482 each, were sold for Friday's drawing. Three of those five were sold in one place - the Qwik Korner Deli & Grocery in Solana Beach.

The owner of the family-run store, Danny Yaldo said, "We were all very excited about it.  Hopefully on Tuesday we will get the big one in here.  It would be great."

As of Monday night, no one had contacted the local lottery headquarters asking about redeeming the tickets for their prize.

Lottery officials could not say if the winning tickets were purchased by the same person but a spokesperson for the lottery said it's not uncommon for the same person to claim a prize with duplicate tickets.

Players will use the advance draw system and sometimes forget that they've already played, the spokesperson said. That can result in overlapping weeks.

Although even she admitted that three duplicate tickets were a little unusual.

Yaldo will not get any money from the three winning tickets sold at his store.  He would receive .5% of the winnings only if all six numbers were chosen correctly. Still, his reputation as being a "lucky" store is attracting lots of business.

Doug Heflin, who purchased a Mega Millions ticket from the Qwik Korner Deli said laughing, "I think I found the lucky store after all."

Two other winning Mega Millions tickets were sold in California: one was bought in Garden Grove and another was purchased in the Sierra foothill town of La Grange.

All included the winning numbers 14, 20, 41, 47 and 53, but missed having the winning Mega number -- 40.

The jackpot for next Tuesday's game will be $266 million because no one in the nation picked the correct combination, the California Lottery said.

The Mega Millions lottery game is offered by 39 states.

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