Did thousands of B.C. Lottery players throw away winning tickets?

Apr 6, 2007, 12:35 pm (4 comments)

British Columbia Lottery

Thousands of disappointed B.C. lottery players were confronted by full-page newspaper ads yesterday suggesting they may have been robbed of past winnings.

While discovering they didn't win Wednesday's $38 million Lotto 6/49 jackpot, they also learned they could have held winning tickets for lotteries between Feb. 8 and March 30 and been told they were not winners.

A consumer advisory said a software update to the Internet Number Checker inadvertently prevented draw results from being presented correctly by secondary B.C. Lottery Corp. web addresses. The glitch is believed to have affected about 2,800 customers who requested draw results between Feb. 8 and March 30, using the Internet Number Checker from web addresses other than www.bclc.com.

These include about 20 B.C. Lottery Corp. web domains such as B.C. Lotto, Lotto B.C. and B.C. Lotteries, which would normally reroute users to the official bclc.com site.

The corporation says the problem does not affect 99,000 players who checked their results directly at bclc.com, or on PlayNow at bclc.com. Nor does it affect those who used Check-a-Ticket terminals in retail outlets, or self-serve terminals at bars and pubs.

[Editor: Lottery Post's Lottery Results Search was/is not affected by the B.C. Lottery's computer glitch, and has always proivded valid winning number advice.]

Communications officer Robin Cook said prizes go unclaimed throughout the year, but there was no unusual spike in such prizes during the glitch period.

Cook encouraged those who believe they were affected by the problem to contact the corporation.

The corporation is also running separate ads, headlined Did You Win?, showing customers how to make sure they are not cheated by retailers. The campaign coincides with a scandal in Ontario involving fraudulent wins by retailers of lottery tickets.

BCLC communications officer Robin Cook said there is no reason to suspect vendor fraud in B.C.  She was unable to comment on earlier reports that B.C. vendors are winning an estimated six times more prizes than they statistically should while the B.C. Ombudsman is investigating BCLC practices in the wake of the Ontario scandal.

"We expect this third-party investigation will provide further insurance that in B.C. our games are fair and the correct prizes are paid to the correct winners," Cook said.

The ombudsman's report is expected in mid-to-late May.

Meanwhile four B.C. ticketholders in Burnaby, Kamloops, Vancouver and Victoria each won secondary prizes of $340,495 in Wednesday's draw for having five correct numbers and the bonus number.

The winning numbers in Wednesday's draw were 5, 16, 21, 25, 40 & 48. The bonus number was 31.

Two tickets bought in Ontario share the jackpot of $38 million.

Wire Reports

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Comments

RJOh's avatarRJOh

I'm surprised regular or systems lottery players who track their numbers hadn't discovered this glitch before or maybe they had.  I keep an updated file for all the lotteries that I play and the combinations I've played and anytime I see something that doesn't jive with my data I recheck both for errors.  I only purge the files of the combinations that I've played and throw away the tickets after a year or more.

justxploring's avatarjustxploring

That's a shame.  I would always check the main site, but I'm not sure I even trust the official Florida site any more. There have been too many errors. Lately I've been checking my numbers on both LP and the Florida web site.  Then I read the press release in the morning to see where the jackpot was won.  Of course, if the numbers were incorrect and I got 5/6 or 4/6, I wouldn't know.  Maybe I shouldn't tear up the QPs I buy.  I always toss my tickets into a shoebox for about a year, but I throw away the few QPs I buy every week after checking the numbers. It's just a habit because I don't want to remember the numbers.

tnlotto1's avatartnlotto1

that is a crazy story i hope some of them like me are pack rats and have their old tickets laying around. im glad i kept my old losing scratch offs around because tn now has a second chance drawing i can enter them in whenever i remember to do it. i check my numbers by watching the drawing on tv for megamillions,powerball and tn lotto 5. wednesday for some reason they cared more about telling us about the cold snap here and they didnt show the drawing they just went into the weather and the news so i just went to LP and usa mega to get my numbers and the lottery sites to triple check.

rdc137

I keep my old tickets. I have some old ones, like PA Super 6 and a Delaware Powerball printed by the old machines in the pre-Powerplay days (with Annuity stamped on them).

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