ialottery blog

Can Lottery Prize Winners Remain Anonymous In Iowa?

I definitely think that Iowans like to plan ahead based upon the number of questions we receive about the process involved when you win a big prize. Or maybe we’re just a bunch of eternal optimists?

A common thread in that conversation is whether lottery prize winners in Iowa can remain anonymous. The short answer is no. But here are the details:

Under Iowa law, lottery winner’s information is public. It’s possible for individuals, groups of winners or a trust to claim a lottery prize in our state, and all those scenarios have happened through the years. In the case of groups or trusts, the members’ names are released in addition to the name of the larger entity involved.

A recent example is a group of friends from western Iowa who called themselves The Misfits and split a $100,000 prize earlier this month. Their ceremonial check was written out to The Misfits, but the three members of the group also were identified.

The Iowa Lottery will redact sensitive information such as your Social Security number before we release the details, but all other information from the winner claim form is considered public information in our state.

Not Even Her Twin Believed Her At First, But It’s True: She Won A $30,000 Prize

A Waterloo woman said she was in utter disbelief when she first realized she’d won a $30,000 prize on a lottery scratch ticket, and as it turns out, so was her twin sister, the first person she told.

Melanie Wagner said she produced the proof by sending her sister a picture of her winning ticket, then she signed it and hid it in a safe spot until she could get to the lottery’s Cedar Rapids office to claim her winnings.

She won the first $30,000 top prize in the $3 “Lucky 3” scratch game, which just hit shelves April 5. Melanie said she decided to buy tickets in the game because its bright pink color was just glowing in the case, calling out to her. She  stopped by a local convenience store to cash in a different ticket that had won a $10 prize when she decided to try the Lucky 3 game.

She said she thought for sure she was mistaken when she first saw the results of her ticket, so she re-read the directions and scanned the ticket using the lottery app on her phone. It turns out, she really had won!

At the time she claimed her prize, Melanie said she didn’t yet have plans for her winnings, but she laughingly was looking forward to hearing everyone else’s input!

How Many Big Lottery Prizes Have Been Won In Iowa?

Here’s a question that comes our way and appears to have origins in the urban myth that “no one from here ever wins”: How many big lottery prizes have been won in Iowa?

The first hurdle that likely needs to be cleared is how you define the term “big lottery prize.” For simplicity’s sake, I started out with the threshold of $5 million, and then looked at our winners’ lists to determine how many of those prizes have been won through the years here in Iowa. The answer? Iowa Lottery players have won 25 prizes of at least $5 million.

If that level isn’t considered big enough by someone’s definition, we can jump up to the $10 million level. The answer there: Iowa Lottery players have won 13 prizes of at least that amount.

If you keep going up, lottery players in this state have won five prizes of at least $100 million. And the very largest lottery prize claimed to date in Iowa is a $343.9 million Powerball® jackpot that was won in late 2018.

I know some folks won’t ever truly be satisfied with our “big winner” definitions until their name is on the list, but the specifics I’ve shared here show that Iowans have taken home a lot of significant prizes through the years.

Under state law, the Iowa Lottery winners’ lists are public, so we keep a millionaire’s list on our website that shows all the prizes of at least $1 million won in Iowa as well as a list of all winners of $600 or more within the past 12 months.

Tiny Town, Big Win!

An eastern Iowa man who bought a lottery ticket in a tiny town has won big!

Gary Knief of Bellevue won a jackpot prize of $160,074 in the Extreme Green Progressive InstaPlay game.

He purchased his winning ticket Saturday at Kalmes Store, 100 N. Main St. in Saint Donatus, a Jackson County community with a population of about 135.

Gary claimed his prize yesterday at the Iowa Lottery’s Cedar Rapids regional office.

The Extreme Green Progressive jackpot starts at $20,000 and increases with each ticket sold statewide in the game until it is won.

The InstaPlay product combines features from instant-scratch and lotto games. InstaPlay tickets are called "scratchless" because they have no security coating that needs to be removed to determine the prize won. And rather than having supplies of tickets printed in advance like those in traditional scratch and pull-tab games, InstaPlay tickets are printed on demand from the lottery terminal.

Congratulations on your win, Gary! You’re proof in action that big lottery wins can pop up anywhere! 

Player Comment: I Really Liked That Game! Why Did You Stop Selling It?

Here’s a question that came our way about a scratch game that recently ended, and how and why we stop distribution of a particular game.

The player noticed that we’d stopped distributing tickets in the “3-2-Won!” scratch game. He said he always liked playing it and wished we would have kept it around.

There are a variety of factors in the Iowa Lottery’s decision to end a particular game, ranging from how long that game has been on the market, its current sales level, and whether stores want to replace it with something newer. We always discontinue sales in a particular scratch game when the last top prize in it has been claimed. We don’t want a game on the market if you don’t still have a chance at its top prize!

We have dozens of scratch games for sale at any one time, but there are only so many bins for tickets in our self-service kiosks and spots for tickets in our dispensers. That means some retail locations simply don’t have enough room for all the games that are out there, and individual locations can decide which games they want to sell.

Sometimes we have specially-themed games that only run for a short period of time, like our holiday games. Those games come off the market in January each year once the holidays are over. (And it wouldn’t make sense to sell a snowman-themed game in the summer anyway!)

In other instances, if a game has been available for some time and players show us through their overall purchases that they prefer something else, that game will be removed from shelves. In the case of 3-2-Won!, that $2 game had been on the market for two years when we ended distribution of it late last month. Overall sales in newer games simply outpaced it.  

When we discontinue one of our games, the lottery’s district sales representatives pick up any tickets in that game from the businesses that sell them so the game is removed from the retail setting.

Just know that we’ll keep coming up with fun, new games to replace those that are ending!

How To Help: Find The Play ‘Em All Option

An eastern Iowa woman’s email prompted this blog entry, and I’ll do my best here to walk you through how to find the ‘Play ‘Em All’ feature on the lottery terminal in case you ever have trouble buying it.

If you’re not familiar with the Play ‘Em All option, it lets you buy plays to cover all the numbers for the Powerball, Mega Ball and Star Ball in the three different games involved. For example, if you buy the Play ‘Em All option in Powerball, you’ll get 26 plays to cover all the numbers in the Powerball pool (1-26). In Mega Millions, the Play ‘Em all option will give you 25 plays, one for each of the Mega Ball numbers; and in Lotto America, you’ll get 10 plays, one for each of the 10 Star Ball numbers.

The woman who emailed us this week said she was having trouble buying the Play ‘Em All option because employees in some of the stores in her area didn’t know about the option or how a customer could buy it. We’ve asked if she can share with us the stores involved so we can follow up with them to go over the details. But sometimes the best plan as a consumer is to have the information yourself.
 
Here in Iowa, the clerk can find the Play 'Em All feature on the lottery terminal by touching the "Special Offers" tab in the top right-hand corner of the terminal's main screen. That tab brings up the Play ‘Em All screen, and the clerk can then touch the icon for the game you want to buy.

If you’re buying a ticket at a lottery self-service kiosk here in Iowa, after you select a play option in Powerball, Mega Millions or Lotto America, in the upper right of the screen, you'll see a button that says: Play 'Em All. By touching that button, you can play that option.

I hope these “insider” tips can help you walk through the process – and make it easy!

Player Comment: I Don’t Like Seeing A $5 Prize On That Ticket

We got an email this week from a player who didn’t like the prize amounts he and his wife had uncovered while they were playing one of our scratch games. The background involved deals with the play style in our games and how to keep them different and entertaining.

The player who reached out to us said that he and his wife were playing a ticket in a $20 scratch game and uncovered four winning numbers that each had a $5 prize associated with it, so their prize total on the ticket was $20. The player said they didn’t think a prize amount of less than $20 should be on the ticket.

We agree in part with his thinking, but also disagree.

When our team thinks through the different play styles that can be involved in our scratch games, we want them to be entertaining and for there to be a lot of different ways to win a prize. In some of our games, that means you can multiple prizes on one ticket that add up to a grand total when you’re done. (That was the case with the ticket the couple was playing.) In other games, there may be just one prize amount on a ticket.

In any of our scratch games, the minimum amount you can win on a ticket is always at least the purchase price. So, for a $3 game, the minimum prize level is $3. For a $5 game, the minimum prize level is $5, and so on.

How you arrive at the prize total on your ticket varies according to the play-style options in the particular game you’re playing. So, that means if you uncover a $5 prize on a $10 or $20 ticket, keep scratching: There are more prizes to be uncovered!

Player Question: How Does A Prize Claim By A Group Actually Work?

Maybe someone’s planning ahead and looking forward to the time when we can all be out and about again! With the Powerball jackpot now up to an estimated $200 million for tomorrow night’s drawing, we got a question from a player who asked how the process actually works when a group wins a big prize.

A peek back at some very happy Cedar Rapids co-workers who claimed a $1 million lottery prize shows a lot about the process. There definitely was cheering and celebrating the day that The Dream Big Team came to the lottery!

When a group wins a lottery prize in Iowa, just one person signs the back of the ticket, but they indicate it’s on behalf of the group. You would use whatever name your group has chosen, so the details would read something like this: John Smith on behalf of The Dream Big Team.

If the prize involved is more than $600 and requires a claim form, you check the box showing that more than one person is claiming the money. Each member of the group then provides information on a Federal Form 5754 identifying themselves and listing how much of the prize they’re claiming. That’s a very important detail for tax-reporting purposes.

The lottery issues a check for the prize to the person who signed the back of the ticket. That person then can deposit or cash the check and split the winnings with the group!

We keep reminders about group lottery play as a permanent feature on our website, so feel free to check out those details as well. For example, one of the quick tips we give is for the person buying tickets on behalf of a group to keep a careful list of everyone who contributes money, how much they give and when! That can help avoid questions later about who was “in.”

A Milk Run With More: Errand Ends With $10,000 Lottery Prize

There’s something about the every-day aspect of this story, especially during these unusual times, that brings a smile. A southeast Iowa couple has taken home a $10,000 prize from a lottery scratch ticket purchased during a milk run.

Heather Love of Morning Sun claimed the prize earlier this week. She said that her husband, Nick, bought the ticket when he stopped at a local convenience store for milk on the way home from work. She said that Nick rarely buys scratch tickets but decided to get one that day in the “$100,000 Mega Crossword” game.

Heather said she was the one who scratched the ticket later that night after dinner. She thought they’d won big, but said it didn’t really start to sink in until she scanned the ticket on the lottery’s mobile app and it displayed the message: "Congratulations, you won $10,000!"

She said that she and Nick argued good-naturedly over which one of them would actually claim the prize, but agreed that they would use the winnings to buy new carpet and flooring for their home.

Heather said that winning a big prize “kind of makes your heart flutter.” She said she has often heard about people winning the lottery, but now it’s real to her.

Congratulations, Heather and Nick! Thank you for giving us a smile with your story!