Ticket sold in northeastern Ont. wins $70 million Lotto Max jackpot

Reaction in the north to the $70M jackpot ticket After a $70 million winning ticket was sold in the north, Eric Taschner gets reaction from people in the area.

The winner of Tuesday night's $70 million Lotto Max jackpot bought their ticket in the Timiskaming-Cochrane area of northeastern Ontario, lottery officials say.

This is the fifth Lotto Max jackpot won in Ontario since April.

"That means in the past four months alone, OLG has paid out a combined $265 million in Lotto Max jackpot winnings to lucky Ontarians, and now we can add another $70 million on top of that," the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation said in a news release Wednesday morning.

"We also have several new millionaires, who are holding winning Maxmillions tickets plus we had some big Encore winners as well!"

Half of the 14 Maxmillions winners from the Aug. 20 draw are from Ontario.

Tickets sold in Peterborough, Ottawa, Mississauga, Toronto and online won $1 million prizes.

Encore ticket add-ons sold in Unionville, Kingston and Ottawa won prizes ranging from $100,000 to $1 million.

To claim the prize, the winner has to answer a series of questions about the purchase to prove they are the one who bought the ticket.

"While OLG knows everything about that ticket, we have to wait for the person or persons holding the ticket to come forward and go through our routine prize claim review process to determine that they are the rightful owner of the ticket," OLG spokesperson Tony Bitonti told CTVNewsNorthernOntario.ca in an email Wednesday morning.

One of the many questions that is asked is if the numbers were selected or generated at random.

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