Iowa nets $6 million in Powerball profits

Friday, Oct. 21, 2005 | 7:32 a.m.

The Powerball run, which started Aug. 13 and ended Wednesday night with a record $340 million grand prize, resulted in $18.6 million of Powerball sales in Iowa.

The state treasury netted $6 million in profits from Powerball over that period that will be spent on general state government programs, such as education, prisons, health and environmental protection, state officials said.

"We are here to do two things: One is to make our customers happy, and hopefully we did some of that during this Powerball run. The other is to raise money for good causes for the state, and we think we have been successful in doing that also," Iowa Lottery President Edward Stanek said.

The winning Powerball ticket was bought in Oregon. As of Thursday afternoon, no one had come forward to claim the jackpot, the second-largest U.S. lottery jackpot.

Although many lottery players ended up empty-handed during the Powerball run, a total of 607,000 non-jackpot prizes totaling $4.4 million were awarded in Iowa, state officials said.

The biggest prize in Iowa was won by Alicia Rhomberg, 26, of Hiawatha, a youth services worker. She claimed a check for $853,492 by matching five numbers in Wednesday's drawing.

Powerball is played in 27 states, plus the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands.