Yesterday, we learned that someone had hit a progressive jackpot in InstaPlay just two days after the product made its Iowa debut. And today we got to meet that lucky winner!
We had fun helping Lindsey Astor of Des Moines celebrate her jackpot win. Lindsey works at the convenience store where she bought her winning ticket. She said that one of her co-workers had heard about the new InstaPlay games and suggested she buy a ticket. Lindsey tried the $2 “Cherry Twist Progressive” game and won its jackpot, which was up to $3,086.15 at the time.
The jackpot in Cherry Twist Progressive starts at $2,000 and grows with each ticket sold until it’s won. If this is the first time you’re hearing about our new InstaPlay games, click here to see the details about them.
Hi, Lionel. We did feature the first progressive jackpot winner in the Cherry Twist Progressive game on our home page at the time she claimed her jackpot. I also blogged about her at the time, if you want to check out those details here: http://www.ialotteryblog.com/2016/11/meet-iowas-1st-progressive-jackpot-winner-in-instaplay.html. Another ticket has won a progressive jackpot of more than $13,000 in that same game, but that prize hasn't been claimed yet. We feature winners of $10,000 or more on our winners page and although the Cash Spectacular InstaPlay game does have a top prize of $25,000, none of those have been claimed yet. When we have pics of InstaPlay winners, we'll post them along with the winners in our other games. Good luck on YOUR lottery tickets.
Posted by: Mary Neubauer | November 30, 2016 at 08:34 AM
Why don't you post the name of the InstaPlay winners on the Home section of your web page like you do for Power Ball, Mega, etc?
Posted by: Lionel Foster | November 30, 2016 at 07:29 AM
Hi, Mark. Great points you have raised – and these are issues that we thought about as we developed our InstaPlay games here in Iowa. As you’ve noted, the cash register sound plays from the lottery terminal with every InstaPlay ticket that is printed, so if you buy multiple tickets, you’ll hear the sound more than once. That’s a security feature we put in place as a reminder for folks to pay attention that their tickets are being printed on the spot after they have asked for them. The audio level from the terminal is preset by the lottery and can’t be adjusted by store personnel, so you can definitely hear the cash register sound when it plays.
We also purposefully designed our InstaPlay games so that it is not easy to simply notice whether a ticket is a winner. That is another security feature we believed would be good to have in place.
As we say on the Player Security pages on our website, as a consumer, you can have the most immediate impact on your security by being alert and paying attention to your retail transactions – those involving the lottery and any other product. If you ever have a question or a concern about a lottery product or a lottery transaction, please reach out to us right away and we’ll be glad to help. Our main telephone number is 515-725-7900, our email is wmaster@ialottery.com and you know we’re available on social media as well.
Posted by: Mary Neubauer | November 17, 2016 at 11:07 AM
Hello Mary,
What would stop a sales clerk from printing up my ticket, noticing that a ticket was a jackpot winner, and quickly printing up a second ticket for the same game? In a lot of stores, you do not see the ticket come out of the machine. You hear the cash register noise, but not notice if it rings more than once - especially if you are playing more than one of the InstaPlay Games.
Minnesota Lottery had something like this, I believe - and it had a separate printer to print the ticket out in front of the buyer, after you had paid. How does the Lottery prevent things like this?
Thanks,
Mark
Posted by: Mark Chandler | November 17, 2016 at 05:48 AM