Players can get a refund — IF they held onto losing tickets

By Todd Northrop

When the New Mexico Lottery introduced its latest lottery draw game, Pick 4, in early February, players had no idea that many of the tickets they purchased were completely worthless with no chance of winning.

That's because the game's computerized drawings were incorrectly programmed, making combinations with repeat digits impossible to be drawn.  Only combinations in which every digit was different were able to be drawn by the computer system.

So you've won the lottery and suddenly you find you have a bunch of new relatives. Distant cousins. A long-lost half-sister.

New Jersey lawmakers are looking to protect state lottery winners from potential moochers and scammers by allowing them to remain anonymous.

Only a handful of states permit lottery winners to keep their good fortune private, although some allow winners to put their money into trusts, allowing them some degree of anonymity.

A bill before the state Senate State Government, Wagering, Tourism & Historic Preservation on Thursday (A3616) would allow New Jersey Lottery winners to keep their identities secret forever.

A family from a village outside Dublin, Ireland, has claimed a €175 million (US$198.7 million) EuroMillions jackpot after stashing the winning ticket in an Argos catalog under a mattress.

The family spent the day digesting and celebrating the news that it had won Ireland's biggest-ever jackpot.

"This is unbelievable. It will take us some time to get our heads around this win and to organise ourselves," said a spokesperson for the family, which has not been named.

"We are a very close family. We meet every week and we take holidays...

A group of Long Island area co-workers have claimed the $437 million Mega Millions jackpot for the January 1 drawing, the largest jackpot in New York Lottery history.

An Estero man is taking home millions in Florida Lotto winnings, according to the Florida Lottery.

A Mega Millions ticket worth more than $1.5 billion purchased in October, 2018, will be worthless in about two months if no one comes forward to claim the cash.

New Hampshire on Friday became the first state to legally challenge last month's U.S. Department of Justice decision to revise the Federal Wire Act, filing a federal lawsuit that would halt enforcement of the opinion that could keep the state from selling lottery tickets online.

A Lansing woman recently won three big Michigan Lottery prizes on the same day and one of them was worth $250,000.

A 48-year-old father of two from Owen Sound, Ontario, won just shy of $33.4 million (US$25.2 million) in the Feb. 2 Lotto 6/49 draw, Ontario's gaming operator announced Monday.

A lottery winner in Jamaica who seemingly wanted to remain anonymous chose quite the mask to conceal his face.