The mystery began on Thursday, Dec. 23, 2010 at 3:24 p.m. on a QuikTrip in Des Moines.

A Hot Lotto ticket bas bought there and six days later, the ticket turned into a $16.5 million winner. Then the ticket went unclaimed for 364 days, 22 hours and 10 minutes. National lottery

Then on Dec. 29, two attorneys from Davis, Brown, Koehn, Shors & Roberts PC presented the ticket, one hour and 50 minutes before it was to expire. Lottery numbers

The person responsible for solving the mystery: Steve Bogle, Iowa Lottery vice president for security.

Now, why is this case so important? Bogle said basically there is more at stake than millions of dollars, it is about the integrity of the Iowa Lottery. When an anonymous source claims major prizes, it undermines public confidence and gives the impression of impropriety in the game.

“It doesn’t work if people don’t believe everybody has the same odds of winning,” he said. “There is nothing to suggest anything improper has been done here, but we need to check every angle to know if the ticket was legally obtained, legally possessed and legally claimed.”

The ticket was signed by Crawford Shaw of Bedford, N.Y. He is not the winner. He represents the person who won.

“I think everything will be OK when all the facts are put on the table,” Shaw said.

They’ll have to be, according the lottery rules, if the person behind the trust isn’t known to lottery officials, they won’t get paid.

So Bogle is both detective and honor guard in this Iowa Lottery history. He won’t reveal what he is doing to verify the claim, but he was a lawman for 36 years, he knows his way around an investigation. He actually joined the lottery after retiring as a brigadier general in the Iowa Army National Guard.

Nobody is better suited to lead the investigation than Bogle, said Gene Meyer, Bogle’s former director of the Iowa Department of Public Safety, which houses the investigation division.

“If you want something handled right and with great integrity, there is no question Steve will take care of it,” Meyer said.

“He is a person who does things right. He has great vision and he earns his opportunities.”

Even Bogle seems to be as puzzled as the public about the elusive winner.

“Like everyone else, I want to know where this ticket has been for the last year,” Bogle said. “Basically, we start at the end — the day it was claimed — and work backward.”

But in this case, little has been made public about the person who bought the ticket.

So, since then, the lottery has received dozens of claims the ticket was stolen. Such claims are common when big jackpots are awarded, though the plan is to investigate the veracity of each claim. The alleged theft victims, however, all failed to sign the ticket. Under Iowa law, the person who possesses the ticket owns it, unless the ticket is signed. Even the actual winner never signed the ticket, and instead delegated the task to Shaw as a trustee.

However, lottery officials are certain the ticket is genuine. They just don’t know who bought it.

“No lives are on the line here,” Bogle said. “That’s different than a lot of the cases in my career. This one, though, I think there’s going to be a happy ending.”