Missouri man becomes Iowa’s 140th $1 million winner

DES MOINES – Iowa Lottery officials went the extra mile, or in this case the extra 213 miles, to find a $1 million prize winner in a Powerball drawing held last November.

Lottery chief Terry Rich said Monday his staff did some long-distance sleuthing that resulted in them making contact with Richard Watson, a Belton, Mo., man who had won a $1 million Powerball prize but didn't know it because he hadn't checked the ticket.

Watson, 58, who repairs industrial injection molding machines, said he purchased the Powerball ticket for the Nov. 16 drawing when he stopped while traveling to fill his vehicle with gas at a convenience store along Iowa Highway 38 in Tipton.

However, set the ticket aside and didn't check it for months.

In the meantime, lottery officials working with the Kum & Go officials where the $1 million ticket was sold were able to hone in on who they thought the purchaser was, Rich said, and contacted his local financial institution to see if he could call lottery officials.

Watson said initially he was skeptical when he received a call from UMB Financial Corp. in Kansas City, Mo., stating that the Iowa Lottery wanted to speak with him, thinking he might be getting scammed. However, he said he saw media coverage online from the lottery's news conference Friday in Tipton trying to track down unclaimed prize winners and said the articles helped him realize the situation was real.

Watson said he was shocked when he learned last week that he'd won a big prize.

'I travel for work and I have a bundle of lottery tickets that I was planning on going through, but I hadn't yet,” Watson said. 'And I received a call that I thought was a scam, but it turned out it wasn't.”

He said he had set the ticket aside and didn't check it for months. In fact, he currently has tickets from several different states that he has yet to check, but he plans to do that soon.

With Watson's prize claim Monday, Iowa Lottery players have claimed 140 prizes of $1 million or more – including jackpot prizes -- since the lottery's start in 1985. The range has been from $1 million up to $241 million.

Watson, who currently lives with his elderly parents, said proceeds from the Powerball prize will enable him to spend more time with them.

'Now we'll be able to move back to the Las Vegas area where we're originally from and get a nice little place together,” Watson said in a lottery news release. 'This will work out quite a bit to be able to make a major life change.”

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