Iowa Lottery Headquarters. (RI photo)
The Iowa Lottery is asking everyone to double-check old tickets as a Mega Millions ticket with a one million dollar prize sold in Ames is still unclaimed.
Lottery spokesperson, Mary Neubauer says there are now just three months left before the ticket expires.”It is so unusual for a prize of this size to be sitting out there unclaimed this long,” she says. The ticket was sold at the Filling Station/Gateway Express.
“It’s a combination, kitchen bakery convenience store. It’s on the south end of Ames. It’s right by where a lot of large hotels are in that area,” Neubauer says. “So, you know, it just becomes a question of was it someone from out of town who bought this ticket is someone local, who has just never checked it? So we’re doing our best to just say please, please, if you have a ticket at home, get it out and double check it.”
Neubauer says the date of the drawing was near a holiday and a football weekend. “Tuesday, September 6, that was just after the long Labor Day holiday weekend in 2022. And that same weekend, Iowa State played its season opener at home against Southeast Missouri State,” Neubauer says. She says it’s possible a football fan from Missouri bought the ticket and forgot about it.
“It is something that people talk about every day in the store. It’s you know, folks are aware that this prize was one with the ticket purchase at the store folks are talking about it there every day. So it would seem to indicate that if you’re local, you might already know about it,” she says. Neubauer says there are a lot of different ideas about where the ticket may be. “Maybe it’s riding around on the sun visor in somebody’s car or it’s still in somebody’s wallet after all this time,” Neubauer says. “You never can tell.” They ticket could have gone through the wash in somebody’s pocket, or maybe got thrown away.
Neubauer says anyone who may’ve been in Ames around that time should check any old tickets. If the ticket is not brought in before it expires — the one million dollars would go back into the prize pool.