Winning Powerball ticket worth $156 million sold at Pewaukee gas station remains unclaimed

A $156.2 million Powerball ticket could be tucked in a visor, in the trash or maybe in a safe deposit box.

What's certain: the ticket, purchased at the Pewaukee Corner Pump, 1194 Capitol Drive in Pewaukee, hasn't been redeemed at the Wisconsin Lottery office in Madison.

Although the clock is ticking, it hasn't run out on the winner who has 180 days from the day the ticket was drawn, March 22. That would be mid-September.

And it's likely that the lottery knows the identity of the winner — or at least what he or she looks like. That's because lottery officials took the surveillance video from the gas station the morning after the winning ticket was drawn.

"I talked with a lady from the lottery. They think they know who it is," said Steve McMahon, whose family owns the Corner Pump and four other gas stations in the area. 

"But all they have is a picture — unless they have some sort of facial recognition software."

"The Lottery does not use video surveillance to try to identify winners," Eileen O'Neill, deputy revenue secretary, said in an email. "We would only use such technology if there was a need to conduct an investigation."

Under state law, the name of the winner is made public. The winner, however, is not required to make a public appearance, a spokesman for the Wisconsin Lottery said.

Even though lottery ticket buyers are regular customers, the station owners don't know who bought the winner, McMahon said.

"They don't tell us what time it happened," McMahon said of the winning ticket sale. The sale could have been any time between Sunday, March 19, and the drawing on the night of Wednesday, March 22.

"We sell hundreds of tickets a day," he said.

The ticket is worth $156.2 million when paid out as an annuity, or $93.1 million as a lump sum cash payment. 

A total of 47 lotteries sell the Powerball game. That includes 44 states, Washington, D.C., the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. There were 16,277,301 Powerball tickets sold in the March 22 drawing, a lottery spokesman said.

The jackpot doesn't crack the top 25, according to the Wisconsin Lottery. Tops was a $1.586 billion ticket sold in January 2016.

Winning tickets have gone unclaimed. Last winter, a $1 million Powerball ticket sold in Madison went unclaimed, and a Badger 5 ticket sold in McFarland worth $241,000 without a winner stepping forward.

For the March Powerball drawing, there's another winner that's already been paid: the Corner Pump. Retailers that sell the winner receive 2% of the winning ticket amount, up to $100,000. 

"We put it toward the business and helped out the employees," McMahon said.