Nota Paraná busca 460 ganhadores de prêmios esquecidos; 18 na região

Somewhere in Paraná, 460 people are sitting on money they don't know they have. The state's tax authority is looking for them—consumers who bought things, provided their tax ID numbers at checkout, won lottery prizes of one thousand reais through the Nota Paraná program, and then simply walked away without collecting. The deadline is closing. Some of these prizes will expire within weeks.

The Nota Paraná program works like a tax incentive wrapped in a lottery. When you give your CPF at the register, you enter a drawing. Win, and credits land in your account. But winning means nothing if you never check. Across 159 municipalities, these 460 people did exactly that—they won and forgot. Eighteen of them live in the regional area: six in Arapongas, five in Apucarana, two in Ivaiporã, and one each in Bom Sucesso, Cambira, Jandaia do Sul, Jardim Alegre, and Mauá da Serra. Curitiba alone accounts for 159 unclaimed prizes, roughly a third of the entire state's forgotten winnings.

The mathematics of expiration is what drives the urgency. Credits in this program have a shelf life: twelve months from the moment they're generated. Someone who won in July of 2025 has until July of 2026 to claim their prize. After that, the money vanishes. Marta Gambini, who coordinates the program, explained the stakes plainly: the team doesn't want anyone to lose money through simple inattention. Yet it keeps happening. Between January and May of this year alone, fifty-seven million reais in credits and prizes expired—money that simply ceased to exist in people's accounts. Last year, over one hundred forty-nine million reais went unclaimed across the entire twelve months.

The state has been aggressive in trying to reach these people. Videos went up on social media. Journalists were contacted. Staff members knocked on doors. And still, most of the 460 remain unreached. Gambini pointed to a pattern: many consumers never develop the habit of checking their account balance. They don't log into the app. They don't visit the website. The program's entire communications strategy—the announcements of drawings, the active search for winners—exists partly to push people to actually open their accounts and look. But habit is powerful. Inattention is cheaper than vigilance.

Another barrier emerged during outreach: passwords. Across every city the team visited, they found people who had forgotten how they logged in, or lost the email address tied to their account. These people want to check their balance. They just can't get in. The state has enlisted Poupatempo centers—service offices scattered throughout the state—to help people reset access and reclaim visibility over their own money.

For those who do want to check, the process is straightforward. On the mobile app, you navigate to "Conta Nota Paraná," then "Meu Extrato." There you see every credit added month by month, and next to each one, the expiration date. The website offers the same information under "Minha Conta Corrente," in the "Meu Extrato" section at the bottom of the screen. Once you know what you have, you can transfer it to a bank account whenever you want—the minimum is five reais.

What happens to the money that expires? It doesn't vanish into a void. It returns to the state treasury, where it gets allocated to public services: health, education, security, and other infrastructure. In a sense, unclaimed prizes become everyone's problem and everyone's benefit. But that's cold comfort to someone who won and forgot. The state is still looking for these 460 people. The clock is running.