BCLC said in a press statement: “We can confirm that it is the genuine ticket and have validated it in our system. As is the case with all prize claims BCLC will now undertake the verification process to determine the rightful ticketholder.

“The ticket was presented within the required one-year time frame. There is no time limit associated with prize claim verification.

“Given the unprecedented interest in this prize, we will communicate further when the verification process has concluded.”

SHOPPERS Drug Mart employee Gayleen Rose Elliott filed a lawsuit last year in B.C. Supreme Court claiming her fellow employee Dalbir Sidhu has the unclaimed Lotto ticket that belonged to the workplace lottery pool which he ran.

And she apparently does not believe Sidhu’s notice of response in which he claimed that he had forgotten to buy the usual tickets on March 14 last year although he had told his colleagues that he had purchased them.

In the lawsuit Elliott claimed that Sidhu initially told her that he had bought the pool’s tickets at a Surrey gas station. She said she could not find the validated tickets for March 14 in the box where their lottery tickets used to be kept. Sidhu then emailed members of the pool that he forgot to buy the March 14 tickets because of a recording error and prior family engagements. She claimed when pool members approached B.C. Lottery Corp. (BCLC) they were told their chosen numbers were never sold. Elliott claimed that Sidhu has “converted” the ticket for his own benefit. The winning ticket, which has yet to be claimed, was purchased in Langley.

Sidhu claimed in his lawsuit that there was no contract among the lottery pool members and that he had managed the pool voluntarily with no compensation.