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.
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.
With these type of shenanigans going on I would,n play.
Simple solution. Quit playing.
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..
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.
[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?
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)
FRAUD in China? Noooooooooooo!!!
Need I say more about Tennessee,stop playing..simple solution.
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?
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!
Why would an individual (in any country) expect a governmental agency to check/audit a peer governmental agency and receive a true/fair outcome?
$8 billion US dollars...Wow!!
No wonder the Chinese government didn't want to pay it out.
Now that would never ever happen here, in these here United States, right?
I consider any drawing in the states a fraud if they use computers to draw their numbers. If a ball drawings goes awry then it is one drawing. If a computer drawing goes awry then it is months and months before it is found out (99% by the players, mind you, not the commission that over sees this stuff) and then there is no way to get your money back unless you kept all the losers for months of playing when this happens. Players in CA, TN, AZ have all been burned first hand. You want fraud, look no farther than your backyard. It happens all the time. It will happen again.
1 United States Dollar equals
6.246 Chinese Yuan
50,000,000,000/6.246 = 8,005,123,278.89
I'll buy the 8 billion & some 5 M in pocket change.
I don't think china commited any crime but rather things are actually normal. We all need to understand the chiness government controls everything there including lottery balls that go in reverse to ensure china progress by all means neccessery so you are probably better off being a happy monk in china than trying to win the lottery at least you be rich in spirit and very happy while you dream about your lottery price and california beach girls lol.
Lets see..... A former Communist China... robbing its citizens of their fair share.......really.... no surprise....
Not only is this likely to happen in the US, i suspect it already has...not to the degree where some obvious shananigans were publicised to raise serious alarm but i'm pretty sure things go on here as well.
Case in point...
I will never for get this day..
It was a Saturday about 2 years ago in the build up to one of the MASSIVE Powerball draws. I was in Tallahassee, FL visiting friends and drove by a billboard that had the advertised amount for that night's draw, it was about 224/226 million or so. Anyway, being the dreamer that i am, each time i drive by one of these billboards i'd always either say something like "you belong to me", "i want that" ect. About 5:30pm on the way back to my hotel room when i drove by the billboard again it said $250Million, up from the previous amount. I thought, that is odd, sales are never that robust at the level to justify such a large jump, especially since it wasn't like one of those $375millon one day, then due to strong sales it rose to like $420 or so.
So i went back to my room and checked the Powerball online and the amount for that drawing was $224/$226...cant remember the exact figure. I was really curious what the heck was going on. So i drove back to the billboard to see what it said just in case i was loosing it or something and yep, it said $250million. I was broiled, not sure why, my initial instincts suggested that i should jsut chill since its maybe just an error. So i called the office to figure out what was going on but since it was a saturday no one answered.
No big deal right? Well, here's what REALLY PISSED me off, no one won that night (like i said it was one of the build up to one of the massive pots) but the next Sunday guess how much it went up to???? Youve got it, $250 million.
Its bothered me ever since for obvious reasons....why was the amount raised before the draw at 11pm? How did they know no one would have won? I guess a bit less suspicious is how they knew the next draw amount at 5pm in stead of by 10pm but that could be explained i think.
What's my point you may ask???
That we not have a lottery system that screws people over when they win, but its possible that we have a lottery system that determines when its won.
Thoughts?
You know it's weird I recall a very very similar situation while driving from tn to sc once. The signs in ga showed a diff. Amount, and that amount was the new jp amount the next day when it rolled. I don't remember the exact total but it was similar to the ones you listed.
The 50 billion yuan figure in the article is obviously an error. I googled the scandal and found multiple sources that said the jackpot was $80 million U.S., which would be about 500 million yuan. So there's no doubt in my mind that 500 million yuan is the correct figure.