SOMETHING has got to be fishy for the B.C. Lottery Corporation to be unable to verify the $50 million winning ticket for the March 14, 2014 Lotto Max draw that was presented to them on March 9.

A spokesperson for the corporation told The VOICE on Wednesday the claim verification process was ongoing, noting that “each of the claims are unique in themselves,” when asked if this process normally takes so long.

Last month, spokesperson Chris Fairclough told The VOICE in an email: “We don’t publicize details as the process is ongoing. Prize claim verification takes as long as necessary to ensure the prize is paid to the rightful ticketholder.

“Given the unprecedented interest in this prize, we took the unusual step of notifying the public when the ticket was brought in, which was much earlier notification than usual.

“We’ll communicate further when the verification process is complete.”

The BCLC had refused to reveal if the claimant was South Asian.

WHAT makes this whole affair so controversial is that 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 did 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.