We didn't claim the top prize, but Minnesota still has lottery winners

Don't crumple up that Powerball lottery ticket just yet.

Somewhere out there in Minnesota are a dozen ticket holders who can each claim $50,000 from Wednesday's billion-dollar Powerball drawing.

Unfortunately for Minnesotans, the record-breaking $1.6 billion jackpot will be split among three ticket holders in Florida, Tennessee and California. But at least 379,573 tickets in Minnesota will allow holders to cash in amounts ranging from a not-too-shabby $50,000 to an inconsequential $4. In Wisconsin, 13 players are holding tickets that will pay out $50,000.

As of Thursday, a Stillwater man claimed one of the $50,000 prizes, said Don Feeney, state lottery research and planning director. Lottery officials received calls Thursday from a couple of other players who said they also had matched four numbers and the Powerball for the $50,000 win.

More than 1,000 ticket holders in Wednesday's drawing won at least 100 bucks.

Winners have a year to claim their prizes. But if history holds true, Feeney said, some prizes will go unclaimed.

"A lot of people say, 'Oh, I didn't win the jackpot,' and they don't bother to check the rest of their ticket," he said. "Or all kinds of other things happen: The trucker who is driving through the state loses his ticket behind the dashboard or the cat eats it. Who knows?"

Last year, Minnesota profited from $11.7 million in lottery prizes that no one claimed. Unclaimed prizes totaled $9.6 million in 2014 and $11.1 million in 2013.

Lottery officials are still waiting on a $1 million winner from the Minnesota Millionaire Raffle on Jan. 1. That ticket was sold at the SuperAmerica at 1847 Johnson St. NE., Minneapolis. A $100,000 winner in that raffle also has yet to step forward.

Other unclaimed prizes include a $140,000 Gopher 5 ticket bought in St. Stephen, in central Minnesota, for the Jan. 8 drawing, a $28,000 prize from a Dec. 17 Northstar Cash drawing and a $30,000 Northstar Cash prize drawn on Jan. 6.

It's not unusual for people to collect their prizes a couple of months after the numbers are drawn, Feeney said. "Particularly, for something like a million-dollar prize, people may want to consult a tax adviser first or an attorney," he said. "We get a surprising number of them coming in eight or nine months after the fact. Sometimes they just had a bunch of tickets that they didn't get around to checking."

But Feeney wouldn't be one to procrastinate. "I would come in right away, because I wouldn't want to take a chance on losing the ticket," he said.

The entire run-up to the billion-dollar jackpot that began Nov. 5 raked in $49.1 million in sales, Feeney said.

And the top retail seller of lottery tickets during that run was just a half-mile from the U.S.-Canadian border: Ryden's Border Store in Grand Portage, which took in $127,000 in Powerball lottery ticket sales since the November run began.