No word yet from Hot Lotto winner

DES MOINES ? Somewhere, perhaps tucked away in a car?s glovebox or in a sock drawer at home, is a Hot Lotto ticket worth a whopping $16.5 million ? and time is running out for the winner to claim the prize.

Nearly nine months have passed since the jackpot-winning ticket was purchased during the holidays at a Des Moines convenience store along the interstate. No jackpot winner in Iowa Lottery history has ever taken this long to claim the prize, and the jackpot is currently the second-largest unclaimed prize in the country.

Iowa Lottery CEO Terry Rich said while several people have come forward hoping they were the big winner, none of them actually had a ticket to present, and the information they shared does not match the facts about the winning ticket.

Rich said the jackpot-winning ticket was purchased at Quik Trip, 4801 N.E. 14th St. in Des Moines. The ticket matched all six numbers selected in the Dec. 29 drawing to win the grand prize. The winning numbers were: 3-12-16-26-33 and Hot Ball 11.

The $16.5 million jackpot is the third-largest prize ever offered in the game, and the seventh-largest Iowa Lottery prize won to date.

Hot Lotto tickets in Iowa expire a year from the date of the drawing in which a prize is won, so Rich emphasized the prize will expire at 4 p.m. Dec. 29 if it isn?t claimed by then.

?We?ve heard from several people who were worried they might have won the prize and somehow misplaced the ticket, but none of them have turned out to be the winner,? Rich said. ?Remember that you have to present the winning ticket to the lottery to claim the prize.?

Steve Bogle, the Iowa Lottery?s vice president of security, said in addition to checking into the reports the lottery has received, lottery investigators also have worked to possibly identify the jackpot winner by tracking similar ticket purchase patterns. While their work has identified several people who have played the same set of winning numbers, none of them appear to have made the jackpot-winning purchase, Bogle said.

Bogle also noted the jackpot-winning ticket has never been checked on a lottery terminal in Iowa.

?Our investigators take every inquiry seriously. We want to award the rightful winner the money,? Bogle said. ?But these situations also show why we don?t release all of the details about winning tickets. Our security department uses that information as part of its investigations and we cannot compromise that work. We must ensure the security and integrity of our games.?

The jackpot can be claimed in annual, annuitized payments totaling $16.5 million over 25 years or as a one-time, lump-sum payment of nearly $10.8 million.

If the prize expires without being claimed, the money for the jackpot will go back to the 15 lotteries that offer Hot Lotto in proportion to the percentage of sales that came from each jurisdiction. For example, if Iowa contributed 20 percent of the sales for that particular jackpot, Iowa would get 20 percent of the money back. How the money would be used depends upon the specific laws and rules in each state. In Iowa, the money from unclaimed prizes goes into the lottery?s prize pools for future games.