Human Error Temporarily Delayed Iowa Results in Monday’s Powerball Drawing

We provided updates about this throughout the day yesterday, and now we know that a human reporting error caused the winning numbers for Monday’s Powerball® drawing to initially be reported incorrectly here in Iowa, and then led to a delay in the drawing results in the state for several hours.

The Iowa Lottery was able to correctly enter the official drawing results yesterday afternoon and then we resumed paying prizes from the drawing.

The Powerball drawing was conducted correctly as scheduled Monday night and official results were produced. But the Iowa Lottery’s redundant reporting procedures failed after the drawing. It takes time to correct an error like that on the lottery’s statewide gaming system, which links all the lottery terminals and self-service kiosks in the state. Lottery staff were able to complete the corrections by yesterday afternoon.

We at the Iowa Lottery sincerely apologizes for the interruption.

The mistake impacted only the Iowa Lottery’s reporting of the official results for Monday’s Powerball drawing. All other lottery tickets could be purchased, checked and cashed as usual at lottery terminals across the state and the results for all other lottery drawings were recorded correctly.

The CORRECT winning numbers in Monday’s Powerball drawing were: 2-21-38-61-66 and and Powerball 12. The Power Play® number was 2.

The Powerball Double Play® winning numbers were: 9-29-51-53-61 and Double Play Powerball 20.

Those are the winning numbers for which the lottery will pay prizes.

As part of the Iowa Lottery’s procedures, two different people in two different locations both enter the results from lotto drawings before they are officially recorded on the lottery’s statewide gaming system. But when the winning numbers from Monday’s Powerball drawing were being inputted, some of the numbers were mistakenly entered incorrectly.

The mistake initially caused the lottery to report incorrect results from Monday’s Powerball drawing on its statewide gaming system and the lottery website. The incorrect results went live about 12:30 a.m. yesterday and remained available until about 7:15 a.m. that day.

Lottery staffers noticed the error shortly after 7 a.m. yesterday and suspended the results for the Powerball drawing on lottery terminals, knowing that correcting the information on the statewide gaming system would take longer.

The lottery was able to go live with corrected official results about 3:30 p.m. yesterday and resumed cashing Powerball tickets.

Lottery records show that a total of 3,998 in Powerball plays purchased in Iowa won prizes ranging from $4 up to $200 for a total of $24,382 in winnings from Monday’s drawing.

Under the incorrect results initially reported, Powerball prizes won likewise would have ranged from $4 up to $200. Prizes were paid for any of those tickets presented during the time period that the incorrect results were posted.

While the number of people potentially impacted by the situation is small, the Iowa Lottery wants to hear from any players who have questions or concerns. They are welcome to contact an Iowa Lottery Security staffer by calling 515-725-7900 or emailing to [email protected].

Lottery staffers will continue to review drawing procedures with an eye toward improvements in the future.

Comments

[Kim]

Hi Corey,

If you have enough specifics about the time and location from which you checked your winning ticket, the folks in our Security Department may be able to help pinpoint your ticket in our system records. Please feel free to call the Iowa Lottery at 515-725-7900 and ask to speak with a member of our Security staff or email us at [email protected] and include your contact information so someone can reach out to you.

[Corey Stout]

I am an over the road truck driver and I purchased tickets in New Mexico and Arizona!! I use the Iowa winning numbers website to check my tickets!! I was up early on Monday, checked my tickets and threw them away because according to the Iowa lottery website they were losers!! This is very upsetting because I might have thrown away a winning ticket!! I don’t care if this was a human error!! This is very disturbing and disappointing not knowing if I had actually won a prize and now my tickets are in a landfill in Flagstaff AZ!!

[Mary Neubauer]

Hi, Dennis. If you have enough specifics about the time and location from which you checked your winning ticket, the folks in our Security Department may be able to help pinpoint your ticket in our system records. Please feel free to call the Iowa Lottery at 515-725-7900 and ask to speak with a member of our Security staff or email us at [email protected] and include your contact information so someone can reach out to you.

[Dennis Bartolozzi]

How do i know if I had a winning ticket, because I thru away my text after checking it on line early that morning.

[Mary Neubauer]

Hello. You are right that a mistake was made, and we know it's our job to let people know that and tell folks how they can contact us if they have questions. All of those details are here in the blog. We're reviewing our drawing procedures now to see how we can make process improvements as we move ahead. The fact remains that as long as human beings are involved in any process, mistakes can occasionally be made. We all do our best to avoid them, no matter where we work or what we do, but humans will occasionally make mistakes.