ROSEVILLE, Minn. — Minnesota has two mystery millionaires — two people who won $1 million New Year's Eve, but still haven't come forward to claim their prize.
"I'm not concerned at all. You have 365 days to come in,” Minnesota Lottery Executive Director Adam Prock said.
“They may be on vacation, you know?”
The Minnesota Lottery sold 800,000 tickets in their 18th annual holiday raffle this year.
Each ticket sells for $10 and the prizes range from a few hundred dollars, to a few $50,000 prizes, $100,000 prizes and two $1 million grand prizes.
The winning numbers were chosen on New Year’s Eve and Prock says many of the winners showed up the very next morning to claim their prizes.
“We started cashing tickets at 5 a.m. New Year’s Day and we had a line of people at 5:20 who had already cashed their tickets,” Prock said.
“We’ve had a number of the $100,000 winners in here already who were excited to get their checks.”
However, lottery officials say as of Jan. 16, the two $1 million prizes have yet to been claimed.
But we do know where the tickets were sold.
One of tickets was sold at Coborn’s in Delano and the other was sold at the Kwik Trip in Dundas.
Both stores were presented with a $5,000 bonus check for selling the winning tickets.
Managers at the Coborn’s in Delano say their plan is to use the money to pay for a holiday party for their employees as a thank you for all their hard work last year.
Lottery officials say stores receive a bonus check even if the winning ticket is never claimed.
Prock says there are two types of winners, there are people who come in immediately because they'e worried about losing their winning ticket, and there are winners who take their time to seek out advice from an accountant or a financial advisor.
"Some people want to kind of get their ducks in a row, knowing they have a year to come in," Prock said.
Prock says a lot of the tickets are also given out as gifts over the holidays, so it's possible the winners haven't even checked their numbers yet.
If the money does go unclaimed, Prock says the money will be added to the state's fund that pays for roads and bridges, and environmental projects across the state.
Lottery officials say there has only been one instance where a $1 million ticket went unclaimed.
Officials say that ticket was sold in 2022 and officially expired in July of 2023.
According to the Minnesota Lottery, about $13 million worth of lottery tickets go unclaimed every year. Officials say the vast majority of that unclaimed money comes from $1-$3 tickets that people lose or forget about.
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