Expiration Date Is Next Week For Unclaimed $15K+ Prize In Des Moines

Time is running out for an unclaimed lottery prize of $15,625 won earlier this year in Des Moines.

If you’ve got a lotto ticket at home, please double-check it to see if you’re the winner! At the Iowa Lottery, we’re hoping we can jog someone’s memory in time so the prize can be claimed.

The prize was won in the midday Pick 4 drawing on April 21 with a ticket purchased at Cash Saver, 4121 Fleur Drive in Des Moines. Pick 4 prizes won in Iowa have to be claimed within 90 days of the drawing involved, so the $15,625 prize will expire at 4 p.m. next Tuesday (July 20) if it isn’t claimed by then at a lottery office.   

Pick 4, which has been offered in Iowa since September 2003, features a top prize of $30,000, with odds of just 1:10,000 of winning it. Another intriguing aspect of the game comes in the variety of ways players can choose to play it. Plays in Pick 4 range in price from 50 cents up to $5 for the chance to match a four-digit combination of numbers from 0000 to 9999.

There are several ways to win in Pick 4. A player can choose a straight play, meaning that if the winning numbers are 1-2-3-4, the player wins a prize for matching that combination exactly: 1-2-3-4. Another option is to choose a box play, which allows players to win for matching the winning numbers, but not in the exact order drawn (if the winning numbers are 1-2-3-4, you can win for any combination of those numbers, such as 4-3-2-1). You also can choose a straight/box play, which allows you to win for matching the numbers in the exact order drawn or in any order.

The winning numbers in the midday Pick 4 drawing on April 21 were 3-2-1-0 and the Des Moines ticket was for a $5 play that matched the numbers in the exact order selected to win a prize of $15,625.

Pick 4 drawings are held twice a day Monday-Saturday. The game’s midday drawings are at 12:40 p.m. and its evening drawings are at 9:20 p.m.

Here in Iowa, the money from prizes that expire without being claimed goes into the lottery’s prize pools for future games and promotions, so it will be used to pay prizes, just not those prizes that have expired.

Comments

[Mary Neubauer]

All good points, Kevin. And you're right: It MATTERS for people to check their tickets!

[Kevin Pidima]

I'm trying to understand why or how people take the time and spend the money to buy a lotto ticket but never cash in on a win?
I feel like it's due to losing or misplacing the ticket?
The most important part of playing Lotto or Lottery is how you store the ticket after you purchase it so you can have the fun of checking to see if you have won a prize. My advice to all players is to,
#1 Have a safe place that you store your tickets.

#2 Carefully check and double check your tickets to see if you have won (this is the fun part)

#3 Treat all tickets like they are a million dollar winner including signing the ticket, until you are positive that the ticket has no value.

I hate to think about the many people that spend time and money buying a ticket and never experience the thrill of winning.
Good Luck to All and take good care of those tickets!!!

[Kevin Pidima]

Unclaimed prize list currently has about $100,000 worth of unclaimed winnings listed.
If these people think handing over money to a cashier is fun? They should try actually PLAYING THE GAME they spent money on!