Chances are very good that if someone wins Saturday’s promised Powerball prize of $1.8 billion, they will cash in their ticket. But it’s not certain.

Not every jackpot-winning ticket sold over the years has been cashed in. And if you totaled up all the missing smaller “winners” who could claim anywhere from a few dollars to millions of dollars, their total-lost winnings likely stretch to the 10-figure range annually.

Prizes worth about 1% of yearly lottery revenue go unclaimed, said Victor Matheson, an economics professor at the College of the Holy Cross and an expert on gambling and lotteries, citing an annual report from the New York Lottery Commission.

“The amount of unclaimed prizes are similar nationwide,” said Matheson. And since so many lotto tickets are sold each year, that 1% estimate adds up to more than $1 billion.

One of the unclaimed prizes last year was a winning lottery ticket sold on July 3, 2024, at a Walmart Supercenter in Huber Heights, Ohio. That unclaimed ticket would have paid the holder $138 million spread over 20 years, or $65.8 million as a lump sum.

Eight Mega Millions or Powerball jackpots have gone unclaimed in the last 25 years, according to data on the two lottery sites. Those jackpots have a combined worth of $646 million, or $821 million when adjusted for inflation.

But those eight missed prizes are about 1.5% of all 520 jackpots won during that time. Most of the unclaimed potential winnings come from the smaller prizes, and far more of them don’t ever get cashed.

Many lottery players likely never check their tickets after they hear there was no jackpot winner, or that the winning ticket was sold far from where they bought their ticket, according to Matheson. Most probably are unaware they are leaving potential winnings on the table, or stashed their winning ticket in their pockets or junk drawers.

Some prizes are as low as $4 for those who match only the Powerball number in that game. But it can also be millions for those who get the five regular numbers but not the Powerball or Mega Ball number. Mega Millions pays $2 million for that prize, while Powerball pays either $1 million or $2 million, depending on whether the player paid extra for a “power play option.”

Beyond the million-dollar prizes, there are also modest prizes of between $4 and $500 in Powerball and between $10 and $800 in Mega Millions. And there are also prizes for up to six figures offered in the two games, ranging from $1,000 to as much as $500,000.

Different states have different time limits to turn in a winning ticket. Powerball’s site has a list of prizes of $50,000 or more that have not been claimed, as well as the time remaining for the winner to claim them. One of those listed prizes, a $50,000 winning ticket sold in March in Covington, Louisiana, just expired Friday without being claimed.

Most of the money wagered in lotteries isn’t in these jackpot drawing games, said Matheson. About 70% of the $110 billion in tickets sold are for instant scratch-off games. And while he has no firm data to back it up, he suspects relatively few of those winning tickets end up not being cashed.

“There’s just less time between when the tickets are sold and when the player knows if they won, less time for the ticket to be lost or forgotten,” Matheson said.

Donald Trump has warned that, if Venezuelan jets fly over US naval ships and “put us in a dangerous position, they’ll be shot down”.

The president’s warning comes after Venezuela flew military aircraft near a US vessel off South America for the second time in two days, US officials told the BBC’s US partner CBS News.

The reports follow a US strike against what Trump officials said was a “drug-carrying vessel from Venezuela” operated by a gang, killing 11 people.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has said that the US allegations about his country are not true, and that differences between the nations do not justify a “military conflict”.

“Venezuela has always been willing to talk, to engage in dialogue, but we demand respect,” he added.

When asked by reporters in the Oval Office on Friday what would happen if Venezuelan jets flew over US vessels again, Trump said Venezuela would be in “trouble”.

Trump told his general, standing beside him, that he could do anything he wanted if the situation escalated.

Since his return to office in January, Trump has steadily intensified his anti-drug-trafficking efforts in Latin America.

Maduro has accused the US of seeking “regime change through military threat”.

When asked about the comments, Trump said “we’re not talking about that”, but mentioned what he called a “very strange election” in Venezuela. Maduro was sworn in for his third term in January after a contested election.

Trump went on to say that “drugs are pouring” into the US from Venezuela and that members of Tren de Aragua – a gang proscribed as a terrorist organisation in the US – were living there.

The US military has moved to bolster its forces in the southern Caribbean, including through the deployment of additional naval vessels and thousands of marines and sailors to stem the flow of drugs.

The White House said on Friday that it is sending 10 F-35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico.

When asked about the build-up of military assets in the Caribbean, Trump said: “I think it’s just strong. We’re strong on drugs. We don’t want drugs killing our people.”

Trump is a long-time critic of Maduro, and doubled a reward for information leading to his arrest to $50m (£37.2m) in August, accusing Maduro of being “one of the largest narco-traffickers in the world”.

During Trump’s first term in office, the US government charged Maduro and other high-ranking Venezuelan officials with a range of offences, including narco-terrorism, corruption and drug trafficking.

Maduro has previously rejected the US allegations.

The Trump administration is planning to release a report this month that will reportedly link use of the common painkiller acetaminophen (sold under the brand name Tylenol) during pregnancy, as well as certain vitamin deficiencies, to autism spectrum disorder, despite lacking the scientific research to back up such claims.

This is just the latest controversy surrounding the actions of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has repeated unsupported claims about autism in the past, and promised to “get to the bottom” of its cause.

The agency confirmed it is working on a report, but declined to comment on its conclusions. “Until we release the final report, any claims about its contents are nothing more than speculation,” a spokesperson for HHS emailed in a statement.

There is no credible scientific evidence that acetaminophen causes autism or that leucovorin (a derivative of folic acid) can prevent the disorder, as the HHS report purportedly will suggest, according to reporting by the Wall Street Journal.

In fact, those in the medical community, including the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, said in a statement that acetaminophen is safe and recommended for use in pregnancy, especially to treat fever and pain. “Untreated fever, particularly in the first trimester, increases the risk of miscarriage, birth defects, and premature birth, and untreated pain can lead to maternal depression, anxiety, and high blood pressure,” the society said in its statement.

“It is disingenuous and misleading to boil autism’s causes down to one simple thing,” said Dr. Alycia Halladay, chief science officer at the Autism Science Foundation, in a statement. There are hundreds of genes that are linked to autism, and while there are also thought to be other complex environmental factors, the foundation says “any association between acetaminophen and autism is based on limited, conflicting, and inconsistent science and is premature given the current science.”

A few small studies have suggested an association between fetal exposure to acetaminophen and the subsequent risk of diagnosis with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). But the largest study to date, an NIH-funded collaboration between U.S. and Swedish scientists, found no increased risk.

Even before that study was published in 2024, a U.S. District Court had reached a similar conclusion in a product liability case.

Leucovorin, also known as folinic acid, is a form of vitamin B9 (also known as folate) that is used to treat certain types of vitamin B9 deficiency that are usually caused by cancer chemotherapy. It is sometimes prescribed off-label as a treatment for autism, though the evidence that it works is scant.

The use of leucovorin is based on research suggesting that many people with autism have a metabolic difference that could reduce the amount of folate that reaches the brain. Leucovorin appears to offer a way around that metabolic roadblock.

Folate is important for brain and nervous system development, which is why pregnant women are often prescribed supplements that contain folic acid, a synthetic version of folate. Folate deficiency in a mother increases the risk of neural tube defects including spina bifida, but the link to autism is unclear.

The Autism Science Foundation said in its statement that there are four studies suggesting low folate levels in pregnant women could increase the risk of autism, but it said “this science is still in very early stages, and more studies are necessary before a definitive conclusion can be reached.”