ialottery blog

He’s Already Won, Whether Or Not His Ticket Wins A Prize

A northwest Iowa man has had some good luck all because he signed his lottery tickets.

The story comes from the manager of the Iowa Lottery’s Storm Lake regional office. His name is Bill and while he was at a local gym there this week, one of his friends told him that he’d recently had to go to the hospital for a medical procedure. The friend said that when he got home, he realized he was missing his money clip that had more than $200 in it.

The next day, the friend got a call from the hospital, asking if he’d lost something. He said he had: his money clip. Someone at the hospital had found it, and the only way they knew it belonged to him was because he also had a couple lotto tickets in the clip, and he’d signed his name on the back of them. That’s an easy security procedure we always suggest players follow to identify their tickets as belonging to them.

So in the end, Bill’s friend got back his money clip, his cash AND his lotto tickets! And it proves two things in my book: 1.) There still are honest people in this world; and 2.) Even if his tickets don’t win a prize, his friend is already a winner!

Only In Iowa: Powerball Players Have Chance At $1 Million Prize

Now is your chance: For the next three weeks, Powerball® players in Iowa can enter a promotion for a shot at a $1 million prize.

Any Powerball ticket purchased in Iowa from today through 8:59 a.m. on June 18 can be entered into the “Woo Hoo A Million For You Giveaway.” After the three-week entry period, we’ll hold a drawing on June 19 to determine the winner of the promotion’s $1 million prize.

Call it our version of recycling! Back in April, a $1 million Powerball prize expired in central Iowa without being claimed. Someone bought that ticket at a Casey’s store in Nevada for the Powerball drawing on April 11, 2018. But the prize was never claimed, so it expired on April 11 of this year.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time a $1 million prize has ever gone unclaimed in Iowa. We repeatedly called attention to the prize to try to find the winner, and now we’re dedicating our efforts to ensuring that this prize money finds its way to a new Iowa Lottery winner.

This is a truly Iowa-made effort: Our leadership team at the Iowa Lottery thought through how we could give away this $1 million, one of the district sales representatives in our Cedar Rapids office came up with the promotion name, and only Powerball tickets purchased in Iowa can be entered into the promotion for a shot at the prize.

Please note this important detail: Simply buying a Powerball ticket during the next three weeks won’t automatically enter you into the promotion. You have to be a member of the lottery’s free VIP Club and enter your ticket in your VIP Club account to be entered. Click here for a direct link to the VIP Club homepage where you can find details about joining if you’re not already a member. 

You’ve heard us say many times that the money from lottery prizes that expire without being claimed in Iowa goes into our prize pools for future games and promotions. Well, this big unclaimed prize gives us the chance to demonstrate that!

Each eligible Powerball ticket entered will count as one entry into the promotion, regardless of the number of plays on it or how many drawings the plays may span.

The lottery retailer that sells the promotion’s $1 million-winning ticket will receive a $1,000 bonus from the lottery. That also was the case with the $1 million ticket in Nevada: Even though it was never claimed, Casey’s still got a $1,000 bonus from the Iowa Lottery for selling that ticket at one of its stores. Our retailers work hard every day to sell our tickets, and this is one more way we can thank them.

We know that Iowa has faced some really challenging weather-related events this year, and folks in a large swath of our state are still finding their way through those difficulties. Maybe the buzz surrounding this unclaimed prize mystery and new promotion can give us all a short break to think about something else – and then as Iowans, we’ll get back to work to ensure our state recovers. And the Iowa Lottery will keep doing its best to raise proceeds to help with vital state causes right here at home.

Des Moines-Area Man Claims $2 Million Powerball Prize

A Des Moines-area man is Iowa’s fourth big winner of the year. Robert ‘Rob’ Maser of Urbandale is a regular lotto player. When he realized he’d won a $2 million prize in Wednesday’s Powerball drawing, he called to tell his family and friends. Problem was, they didn’t believe him!

Rob called his dad and told him he’d won the lottery and said he was keeping his promise to buy him a boat if he ever won big. His dad called him a liar.

Rob then took photos of his winning-ticket receipt and sent them to his dad, wife and others so they’d know it was real.

He said this win will be going toward retirement. He doesn’t have plans to quit his day job but he does plan to take care of a few things around the house, like new carpet and paint.

Rob bought his winning ticket at Kum & Go, 4585 156th St. in Urbandale, where's he's a regular. He went there to scan his ticket first thing this morning and even the staff there didn’t believe it at first. Once they realized he really did win, they were very happy for him and took a few photos. The Kum & Go store will receive a $2,000 bonus check for selling the $2 million-winning ticket at one of its stores.

He said he always adds the multiplier options to his lotto tickets in case a win just like this came up. He said he would have been disappointed if he’d only won  $1 million knowing it could have been $2 million for an extra buck. He initially matched the first five numbers but missed the Powerball to win a $1 million prize. But sine he added the Power Play® option to his purchase, it multiplied his prize to $2 million.

Wednesday’s winning numbers were: 7-17-33-61-68 and Powerball 4. The Power Play number was 2. No one matched all six numbers to win the jackpot, so the big prize climbs to an estimated $270 million annuity ($168.9 million lump-sum option) for Saturday. The Urbandale ticket was the only one in the country to win a $2 million prize in Wednesday’s drawing.

Big Prizes Were Won HERE This Past Month

We’re officially into the fourth month of 2019, so in keeping with the new initiative we started this year, it’s time to look back at the biggest lottery prizes claimed in Iowa during the past month.

This map shows all of the lottery prizes of $600 or more that were claimed in March. You’ll find 418 dots on it, as compared to 399 on February’s map. So even with the many, many weather challenges that this winter and spring have brought our way, we were glad to see that people still made it in to see us and claim their prizes!  

Click here for a direct link to this map in an interactive format where you can see the details involved. Each dot shows the retail location where the winning ticket was purchased, the prize won, the game involved, and the date the prize was claimed.

The dots are in different colors for the four types of lottery games here in Iowa: scratch games, lotto games, InstaPlay games and pull-tab games. Scratch tickets have always been the Iowa Lottery’s leading product and they’re represented on the map by red dots, so it makes sense that there are a lot of them!

As I’ve done in the past couple months, I’ll give the reminder here that this map only shows those big prizes that were claimed in March. It doesn’t include prizes that were won but haven’t been claimed yet.