DALLAS — Somewhere in Texas, or maybe far from here by now, there is a single piece of paper worth $1 million.
Hopefully it's not in a landfill.
Texas Lottery officials on Tuesday announced that a winning Powerball "Quick Pick" ticket from October will expire on April 20, if someone doesn't come forward to claim the prize.
The ticket was sold at the Tiger Mart at 3070 N.E. Loop 286 in Paris -- that's Texas, y'all -- in Lamar County. Paris is located about 100 miles northeast of Dallas.
The ticket was a "second-tier" winner -- if you could call $1 million "second-tier" -- in the Oct. 22 Powerball drawing. The ticket matched all five white ball numbers in the drawing: 19-25-48-55-60. But it couldn't match the Powerball number 18 for the big prize.
Lottery officials said the deadline to claim the prize is Thursday, April 20, at 5 p.m., which is 180 days after the drawing. So if you bought a lottery ticket in Paris that day, and since misplaced it, you might want to track it down and double check.
According to Texas Lottery officials, this winning ticket from Oct. 22, 2022, is "the the only active Texas Lottery draw game ticket worth $1 million or more that is yet to be claimed."
If its yours, you can claim your prize at a lottery claim center, listed here, or by a letter sent to the Texas Lottery Commission: Austin Claim Center PO Box 16600, Austin, TX, 78761-6600.
Mail-in claims will take about 8-12 weeks to get processed, but as long as you postmark your million-dollar mail by April 20, you'll be good.
“We encourage our Powerball players to take another look at their tickets, and if your numbers match, sign the back of the ticket before claiming your prize at a Texas Lottery claim center,” Gary Grief, executive director of the Texas Lottery, said in a news release. "We hope to celebrate the Texas Lottery player who became a $1 million prize winner before this prize expires.”
If the prize goes unclaimed, the money will stay with the state "for programs authorized by the Texas Legislature," according to the lottery.
Get your winnings while you still can.
