We’re busy today ironing out all the final details for our “millionaire at the Fair” event Sunday in Mystery Millionaire! We’ve been getting questions from folks about how they can get in on the fun that day, so here’s what you need to know:
The stage for our Mystery Millionaire finale event will be on the Grand Concourse of the Iowa State Fairgrounds, right in front of the Varied Industries Building. It will be hard to miss us – just look for the big stage and all the people wearing green “lottery staff” T-shirts!
We’ll start registering people at 9 a.m. that morning to be in the audience. You’ll line up in front of the stage to get your audience T-shirt and have a shot at our audience prizes that day. (Please remember that you must be at least 21 years old to register as an audience member.)
The big finale will kick off at 1 p.m. Sunday and someone will win a million dollars before we’re done! We’ll give away a total of more than $1.6 million that afternoon to our 15 Mystery Millionaire contestants on the stage, the 15 retail locations where they bought their lucky tickets, and 15 lucky folks in the audience!
Our audience prizes will range from $250 up to $1,000. So not only will you get to be part of the fun, you could take home a prize, too.
We’ll have all the Mystery Millionaire results here Monday, so be sure to check back!
The drawing has been completed this morning and the list of winners in our “Mystery Millionaire” promotion has just been posted! We’re including the entire list here to make things easy for our blog followers, but you can also find the info. on our website.
Here are the 15 contestants (alphabetically by last name) who will join us Aug. 19 on the Grand Concourse at the Iowa State Fair for the Mystery Millionaire finale event. Each of these lucky folks will win at least $25,000 that day and one of them will take home the $1 million top prize!
Thuan Duffert, Des Moines
Betty Freilinger, Monona
Joseph Holmes, Muscatine
Janese Hopkins, Cedar Rapids
Kathy Kasner, Ferguson
Kandy Lorimer, Fairfax
Allison Martin, Cedar Falls
Brenda Mertens, Vinton
Chuck Noty, Garner
Elena Reddersdorf, Eldridge
Kevin Reynolds, Bettendorf
Richard Ritze, Alburnett
Douglas Steenson, Waukee
Dean Stuhr, Des Moines
Sheree Watson, Charles City
And here is the list of 34 players who each won a $10,000 prize in today’s drawing:
Frank Anderson, Clinton
Diane Bales, Cedar Rapids
Judy Bauer, Walker
Tim Brooks, Goldfield
Terry Bryant, Pleasant Hill
Rick Charbonneau, Logan
Doug Conner, Wausaukee, WI
Gary Dezell, Atkins
Judy Fox, Waterloo
Louis Harvey, Ottumwa
Debbra Hebert, Solon
Ronald Huber, Delhi
Patty Laire, Elliott
Debra Lamar, Bettendorf
Janice Megel, Des Moines
Charlie Miller, Bouton
Billie Mims, Cedar Rapids
J C Nobbe, Rockwell City
Linda Northouse, Des Moines
Ricky Peterson, Fort Dodge
Tim Rau, Council Bluffs
Norm Roller, Yetter
Chad Sadler, Hopkinton
Sarah Scogin, Waterloo
Gayle Seehusen, Cedar Rapids
Darwin Stock, Waverly
Harve Sultan, Davenport
James Temple, South Point, OH
Kathryn Van Brocklin, Lansing
Nancy Vincent, Story City
Katie Vriezelaar, Urbandale
Martin Wadle, Algona
Jennifer Winn, Hawarden
Amee Wyatt, Farmington
It’s great to see winners from all over the state in today’s results! If your name is on the list, please check the promotions page on our website for further instructions. If you have questions, you are welcome to call us at the lottery at 515-725-7900.
Congratulations to all our winners and thank you to everyone who entered!
Time is running out for you to enter any eligible tickets you’ve got for the “Mystery Millionaire” promotion!
Sales have been good in the promo, with players making more than 223,000 eligible purchases during the sales period from July 1 through noon Saturday.
But our records show that thousands of those eligible tickets still haven’t been entered in the promotion – and there’s less than a day to go.
As of this morning, more than 184,000 tickets had been entered. That leaves more than 38,000 out there, and if you’re one of those people, we don’t want you to miss out on your chance to win up to $1 million!
Codes have to be entered on the lottery’s website by noon tomorrow to be eligible. Remember that you can use each ticket only once as an entry and you don’t have to keep your bonus Mystery Millionaire entry tickets once they’ve been entered.
The next step in the process comes Thursday, when we’ll select 49 winning tickets from among all those entered. Thirty-four players will immediately win prizes of $10,000 each. The 15 others will advance to the Mystery Millionaire Giveaway on Aug. 19 at the Iowa State Fair. Each of those contestants will win at least $25,000 during a live finale event and could win the grand prize of $1 million.
There will be prizes for audience members that day as well, so don’t miss out on the fun!
Entries for our current "Mystery Millionaire" promotion continue to roll in, but players only have a few more days to purchase their tickets.
You have until 11:59 p.m. on Saturday, which is July 28, to purchase a special $5 Mystery Millionaire pack from your favorite Iowa Lottery retailer. So far we've seen over 100,000 entries, but we won't know final numbers until the end of the promotion.
In case you haven't purchased the pack yet, here's a reminder of what you'll get: an easy-pick Powerball with Power Play ticket, an easy-pick Hot Lotto Sizzler ticket, and along with those, a bonus Mystery Millionaire entry ticket with a code you'll enter on the lottery's website at www.ialottery.com.
If you do make an error, we cannot change the entries after they have been submitted for security purposes. But we will post the winners' information exactly as it was received when they entered. So if your name is selected, you should recognize the information when it is posted to our website.
On Aug. 2, the lottery will select 49 winning tickets in the promotion. Thirty-four of players whose entries are selected will win prizes of $10,000 each. The other 15 will advance to the Mystery Millionaire Giveaway on Aug. 19 at the Iowa State Fair. Each of the contestants at the Fair will win at least $25,000 and could win the grand prize of $1 million!
But lottery players aren't the only ones who can win big in the promotion - we'll also have prizes for the retailers that sell the winning tickets and the audience members at our live event.
The 15 semifinalists who attend the State Fair event each will receive four admission tickets to the Fair; two parking passes; hotel stay for two; admission for two to an exclusive dinner on Saturday, Aug. 18; and spending cash.
Here’s the run-down on our event at the Fair: The first 1,000 audience members who check in at the live show site on the Grand Concourse will get tickets to attend the give-away. Fifteen people in the audience that day will win prizes ranging from $250 to $1,000. And the retailers whose locations sell the winning tickets to the 15 semi-finalists on the stage at that live give-away show will win prizes from $500 up to $2,000.
The clock is ticking! Get your entries in today!
Now that we’ve kicked off our "Mystery Millionaire" promotion, we've gotten some great questions through our Webmaster email account as well as Facebook and Twitter.
When any of us is entering information online, sometimes our eyes can skip over slight mistakes. We've had a few players write or call in to us and ask if we can correct mistakes in spelling, phone numbers or addresses they made when entering Mystery Millionaire on the lottery’s website.
The short answer is no, we cannot do that. And here's why: As part of the security and integrity of the Iowa Lottery, we help protect our players by keeping their information private. Because of that, we cannot change your Mystery Millionaire entries after they have been submitted.
However, after the drawing has occurred, we will post the winners’ information exactly as it was received when it was entered. So if your name is selected, you should recognize the winners' list when it is posted to our website. If your name is selected, feel free to contact Lottery headquarters at 515-725-7900.
While we do make efforts to contact our winners, ultimately it is their responsibility to contact the Lottery to claim their prizes.
We've also had a few players tell us the website is not accepting their 13-digit Mystery Millionaire code. It's important that you take your time entering the code, as it can be easy to transpose numbers.
Finally, we had a great question come in about entering your personal information. When you enter promotions through the Lottery's VIP Club, your information will automatically populate in the entry form for you. Some of you have noticed that is not the case with Mystery Millionaire. That is because this particular promotion is not being run through the VIP Club. However, if you have more than one code to enter at once, there is a link at the bottom of the entry form that says "Enter more codes." Just click on that so you don't have to enter your information each time.
Just a reminder: You have until July 28 to purchase your $5 Mystery Millionaire pack and we're accepting entries until noon on July 31. You can check out all the rules and information on our website. Good luck!
It seems like we've been talking about those unclaimed jackpots forever (it's really only been about six months), but now it's TIME TO GIVE THAT MONEY AWAY!
This weekend, the Iowa Lottery will kick off a summer promotion to give away $2 million in prize money from those two big jackpots that went unclaimed late last year. The "Mystery Millionaire" promotion starts Sunday. It will give lottery players who buy the $5 Mystery Millionaire pack the chance to win prizes from $10,000 up to $1 million! The whole thing will culminate with a live give-away show on Extreme Sunday, the final day of the Iowa State Fair.
Now, I'm sure you'll remember one of the prizes I've been talking about: It was that Hot Lotto® jackpot won in Des Moines that generated international headlines when lawyers representing a trust turned in the winning ticket with less than two hours to go before the prize would have expired in late December. But they ultimately withdrew the claim in January.
But just before that whole situation started, an even bigger prize – that one a $77 million Powerball® jackpot won in Georgia – expired on Dec. 26 without being claimed.
The money from those unclaimed jackpots goes back to the individual lotteries that sell the games in proportion to the percentage of sales that came from each state for those particular drawings. Iowa's share was a total of about $2 million.
With the unclaimed jackpots hitting in Hot Lotto and Powerball, the Mystery Millionaire promotion also will involve those games. From the start of business on Sunday through 11:59 p.m. on July 28, a special $5 Mystery Millionaire pack will be available from lottery terminals statewide. You'll get an easy-pick Powerball with Power Play ticket, an easy-pick Hot Lotto Sizzler ticket, and along with those, a bonus Mystery Millionaire entry ticket with a code you’ll enter on the lottery's website at www.ialottery.com.
You'll need to enter the code on the lottery's site by noon on July 31. You can use each ticket only once as an entry and you don't have to keep your bonus Mystery Millionaire entry tickets after you’ve entered them.
On Aug. 2, the lottery will select 49 winning tickets in the promotion. The folks who entered 34 of those tickets will win prizes of $10,000 each. The other 15 will advance to the Mystery Millionaire Give-away on Aug. 19 at the Iowa State Fair. Each of the contestants at the Fair will win at least $25,000 and could win the grand prize of $1 million!
But lottery players aren't the only ones who can win big in the promotion - we'll also have prizes for the retailers that sell the winning tickets and the audience members at our live event.
The 15 semifinalists who attend the State Fair event each will receive four admission tickets to the Fair; two parking passes; hotel stay for two; admission for two to an exclusive dinner on Saturday, Aug. 18; and spending cash.
Here's the run-down on our event at the Fair: The first 1,000 audience members who check in at the live show site on the Grand Concourse will get tickets to attend the give-away. Fifteen people in the audience that day will win prizes ranging from $250 to $1,000. And the retailers whose locations sell the winning tickets to the 15 semi-finalists on the stage at that live give-away show will win prizes from $500 up to $2,000.
We've been having fun saying "Millionaire at the Fair," and we'll hope to see you there as we cap off summer!
As the lottery’s vice president of external relations, I’m a member of the senior management team at the Iowa Lottery, where I’ve worked since 1999. I’ve spent my years at the lottery learning as much as I can about all the ins and outs of the lottery industry. I’ll put that knowledge to work here so I can share the behind-the-scenes details with you!
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