China's beloved national lottery suspected of massive fraud

Jan 27, 2015, 10:02 am (21 comments)

International

HONG KONG — China loves its national lottery, but now some very suspicious goings-on with the game has ignited a scandal that's capturing the country's attention.

As in most other places, the drawing for China's lottery — the only form of gambling the government allows outside of Macau — is televised nationally, conducted by the China Welfare Lottery Issuing and Management Center, an agency of the government.

But something appears to have gone wrong Sunday night, when the drawing for a 50-billion-yuan ($80 million) prize was suddenly canceled.

A short time later that evening, the lottery agency said that a technical glitch had prevented lottery sales data from reaching Beijing, and then soonafter announced on its official Weibo micro-blogging account that the drawing had been conducted off-air and was won by an unidentified "young immigrant worker in Guangzhou city."

While the Ministry of Civil Affairs issued an apology the next day for "the delay in the lottery drawing," the incident prompted immediate suspicion that the game was rigged. The fact that the details about the winner apparently came just moments after the winning numbers were announced made the affair all the more fishy.

A Beijing News report Tuesday said a man identified only by his surname Zhang had reported the case to the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the Communist Party's top inspector, calling for a thorough investigation.

Zhang said the lottery agency's explanation was "illogical and inconsistent," particularly the mention of a delay in sales data, as "the drawing should be independent of how many lottery tickets they have sold."

Zhang suggested that the real cause of the delay may have been that "someone outside their scheme had won the prize."

Discussion of the controversy was raging across news media and social media alike Tuesday. Meanwhile, the Beijing News report said — perhaps worryingly for the Chinese lottery-playing public — that the national welfare lottery had in fact seen a number of other delayed drawings over the past five years, with most of them unexplained.

Thanks to JADELottery for the tip.

MarketWatch

Comments

Gleno's avatarGleno

Surprised to read that China has a national lottery but not surprised of the allegations of massive fraud.

Do they still have those empty cities that they built after pushing the poor folks out and these folks cannot afford to live in these boondoggle cities.

They are not the smartest in dealing with capitalists ideas because of their collective mentality of their modern history.

What?

hearsetrax's avatarhearsetrax

Skeptical Weirdsvile, China

Get paid's avatarGet paid

With these type of shenanigans going on I would,n play.

Drenick1's avatarDrenick1

Simple solution. Quit playing.

noise-gate

What exactly does Mr Zhang mean by " someone outside their scheme won the jackpot?". Is he suggesting that the winner/winners should be known prior to the drawing?

By the way: China has Mobile execution vehicles known to rock up to your present location and carry out their business. China does not  screw around when they WANT to eliminate corruption..

m3347

Reminds me of the story in the press several years ago when it was revealed that the lottery in France had been rigged. It was a shock, you'd think that in a country like France it couldn't happen.

abjorik

[quote]for a 50-billion-yuan ($80 million) prize was suddenly canceled.[\quote]

 

50billion yuans are 8 billion US dollars. Are they stupid to make such a wrong calculations?

reddbrim's avatarreddbrim

It could happen here right in the good ole USA ,(might be going on as we speak)just fired the wrong person that work inside the lottery or the people that make the machines that the ball comes out of .I sad its going on in  China but I am not surprise I hope its not going on here .(USA)

mypiemaster's avatarmypiemaster

FRAUD in China? Noooooooooooo!!! Sleep

TnTicketlosers's avatarTnTicketlosers

Need I say more about Tennessee,stop playing..simple solution.

Coin Toss's avatarCoin Toss

No surprise, it's the same government that kept their Olympic workers in diapers to put on the show, remember?  come to think of it, would you really want to win money from that group and expect to get paid?
Scared

Gleno mentioned being surprised to find out China has a lottery, kind of is confusing for a communist country. Castro's first move when he knew he ran Batista out was to shoot up the casinos.

When there was a Yugoslavia they had a casino in Dubrovnik and in Vegas we joked about a casino in a commie country and the security force must have been brutal!

HaveABall's avatarHaveABall

Why would an individual (in any country) expect a governmental agency to check/audit a peer governmental agency and receive a true/fair outcome?

Coffee

Drenick1's avatarDrenick1

Quote: Originally posted by abjorik on Jan 27, 2015

[quote]for a 50-billion-yuan ($80 million) prize was suddenly canceled.[\quote]

 

50billion yuans are 8 billion US dollars. Are they stupid to make such a wrong calculations?

$8 billion US dollars...Wow!!

No wonder the Chinese government didn't want to pay it out.

lothob's avatarlothob

Now that would never ever happen here, in these here United States, right?

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