I agree with four4me, CCHS13 and others.  This was blatantly false advertising.  Many people base their scratch-off plays on how many larger-tier prizes are still out there on the game they are playing.

"Ooops" doesn't cut it.

This state lottery continues to be the worst in the nation.  The new lottery director has a chance to add some credibility to the game for its players.  This will be the acid test of where the Indiana lottery wants to take its future.

Rick G....I agree with you that many people base their scratch-off plays on how many larger-tier prizes are still out there.  That is what it appears the two guys in Indiana were doing.

Do you feel the lottery purposefully did this or it was human error?  In either case they should make some ammends to those who puchased tickets, whether 1 or 4000, as the tickets were purchased under flalse pretenses.

I know the Indiana Lottery has had probelms in the past.  To me it seems like they need to get a lot better control of what is communicated from their end.

On the slim and somwhat plausible chance, the lottery can counter state that the remaining top prizes just hadnt been claimed. A person can retain the ticket and wait til the 11th hour to remit the winning ticket. Now mind you, most folks do try to claim within a shorter time frame...

I disagree with the person who used the PB/Mega analogy. These are not the same as its on a smaller, more controlled scale. Scratchers can be tracked in advanced as to the locale and almost a time frame from the ticket blocks. If a store sells that particular series within a week , and the lottery knows the major jackpot ticket is in that series, they then know that it was sold. they just dont know if the person lost it, is hiding it, or buried it in the backyard.  There is a level of unknown once its in the buyers hands.

That WAS the point of the MM analogy,  to state that they are aware of

what has been sold and what has not been sold.  Hell they can even track

a scratcher if a row or 2 have been stolen so there is no excuse for not knowing

your available prizes.  Now remaining prizes is different than unclaimed prizes.

If a prize has been validated that means it has been proven to be a winner but

that does not have to mean it has been claimed, either way that prize should no

longer be considered available as far as the other tickets are concerned

CCHS13...do you really think the Indiana Lottery was trying to cheat its' players?  Wasn't it more a case of mismanagement?

The pdf noted earlier gives a very good rundown of what happened. Simply put the Indiana Lottery was not very good in overseeing this particular game.  Now there should be some relief given to those players who bought tickets based upon the incorrect information given out by the lottery, but I don't see it as the lottery trying to cheat. 

I can prove the lottery is rigged.

I also in the past have bought books of tickets based on the fact that there were more higher prizes not claimed in one game compared to another. What I hate about the Illinois Lottery is when a book is returned from a store and not re-distributed they do not subtract the prizes that may have been in that book from the totals on their website. They claim they just destroy them. This is ridiculous and unjust. It just to me is amazing how these lotteries who rake us over the coals with payout percentages wont do everything possible to help the player. Due to this reason I am very leery on ever buying big blocks of tickets again.

Just because they have the ability to track winning tickets before they are claimed doesn't mean it's a good idea to do it. Having a record of where winning tickets were sent can potentially be useful for security reasons, but monitoring that distribution ahead of times offers potential for fraud. I forget if it was Indiana or a nearby state, but there's been at least one case where a lottery staffer used the information on where a winning ticket had been sent to allow others to buy all of the tickets in that store. It seems to me that the information on where winning tickets are sent should be very tightly controlled and only used when necessary. Otherwise it just increases the chances that somebody will use the information for illegitimate purposes.

In the immortal words of Ted Knight's character in Caddyshack:

Well........we're waiting ..........

I agree that it does make you wonder how often this happens, and what, if any, checks and balances are in place to prevent it.  With the state coming to rely on lottery revenues to fund a large part of its expenses, it would be foolish to think this cannot happen.  And, to assume the matter is always under control.

Had these rather sore losers not made a case of it, would any of the this info become public?  Probably not.  I can't recall one instance of a state or lottery board coming out with such info on their own.

 We're entering times where the system of reliance of lotteries to fund out state and local governments needs agressive oversight.  Until our leaders are willing to do it the right way, by collecting taxes, then we will have to get used to things like what happened in Indiana.  Oversight is critical here.