Some Idahoan is $1 million richer. Come claim your Idaho Lottery raffle prize, fool!

Imagine what you could do with a million bucks.

Leave your job and travel? Pay off your mortgage? Completely finance your children’s college education? Eliminate your student loan? Go be a high roller in Vegas? Provide an amazing boon to your favorite charities?

Some Idahoan could choose from those and many other options — if only they’d come forward and claim their Idaho Lottery prize.

The Lottery said in a news release this week that three months after the drawing in its annual $1 million raffle, the top prize is still unclaimed. The winning ticket was sold in Blaine County — you know, home to Sun Valley and Ketchum, so maybe the rich are just getting richer — and the winning number was 027047.

Whoever holds that ticket, though, has not contacted the Idaho Lottery.

“Players who win a large lottery prize sometimes delay coming forward to claim it, but we’ve reached the halfway point in the claiming period ... and the player needs to start thinking about coming forward,” Idaho Lottery Director Jeff Anderson said in the release. “Winning tickets expire 180 days after the drawing and this one will be invalid after June 27, 2022. After that date, we will be unable to pay the claim.”

You hear that, big winner? You have about three months left.

If you don’t come forward, there will be some worthy recipients of the money. Unclaimed prizes when the fiscal year ends ultimately go to the Lottery’s beneficiaries: Idaho public schools, for instance, and the Department of Administration’s Permanent Building Fund.

In fact, the Idaho Lottery said in the news release that anywhere from $3.3 million to $4.8 million in winning tickets go unclaimed each year. Yikes. No wonder the state is becoming such an expensive place to live — people are walking around not even needing hundreds of thousands of dollars.

If no one comes forward, it will be the third time that a $1 million prize goes unclaimed, according to the release. A winning ticket sold in Irwin in 2010 never was cashed in, and one sold in Meridian in 2012 also was not claimed.

The Idaho Lottery said the winner of the 2021 raffle should sign the back of their ticket immediately and contact the office in Boise. It also said that a $10,000 prize from the raffle remains unclaimed; that winning ticket was sold at a retail location in Nez Perce County.