Taking a second look at that lottery ticket you bought and left on the shelf weeks ago could pay off.
Iowa Lottery spokesperson, Mary Neubauer, says there are several big prizes waiting to be claimed. “The prize that has the closest upcoming deadline is a $10,000 Powerball prize that was won on September 5th of 2015 with a ticket purchased in Crescent in southwest Iowa,” Neubauer says. You have 365 days from the date of the prize drawing to collect lottery prizes.
Neubauer says there is a much larger unclaimed prize of $2 million from a recent drawing in Cedar Rapids. “Now that prize is coming up on a month that it will have been unclaimed,” she says,”which is a little unusual, most of the time when it comes to prizes of that size the person comes in pretty quickly. But, every prize claim does have its own timeline and we never know what the circumstances are involved until a person comes forward.”
The winning ticket for the $2 million was purchased at the Hawkeye Convenience Store in southwest Cedar Rapids. It can sometimes take a little time for someone to claim a large prize because they are trying to make plans for dealing with a life-changing event. “We always suggest that people talk to an attorney, talk to a financial planner, get their ducks in a row before they come in and claim a prize. So, it’s entirely possible that that’s what is going on,” according to Neubauer.
She says they want to make sure someone hasn’t stuck a ticket they bought away without checking on it as they get involved in summer activities. She says people are on vacation and doing other things that are not in the usual patterns they have during the rest of the year. Neubauer says you should take time and check your tickets so you don’t miss out on a winning ticket.
There are several prizes each year that go unclaimed. “In our latest fiscal year, nearly $1.3 million in lotto prizes went unclaimed here in Iowa. Now in general those are smaller prizes — maybe two or three dollars — that may not be big prizes individually, but they certainly add up over time,” Neubauer says. Money from the winning tickets that aren’t claimed is put back into the prize pool for new drawings.
You can check at your local retailer to see if a ticket is a winner, or go online. All of the winning numbers from past drawings are on the Iowa Lottery website: ialottery.com. The Iowa Lottery has offices in Cedar Rapids, Clive, Council Bluffs, Mason City and Storm Lake.
Here are some other large Iowa Lottery prizes that are unclaimed:
Prize Drawing/Amount Won/Retailer/ Expiration Date
Powerball
Jan. 13, 2016 /$100,000/ Kum & Go, 7265 Vista Drive, West Des Moines /Jan. 13, 2017
April 30, 2016/ $50,000 /Casey’s, 3902 State St., Bettendorf /May 1, 2017
Hot Lotto®
June 29, 2016/ $90,000/ Delimart, 2410 Mormon Trek Blvd., Iowa City /June 29, 2017
July 30, 2016 /$9,000 /Jiffy, 2402 17th St., Spirit Lake /July 31, 2017