Man who spent $40,000 on lottery sues to get money back; lawsuit claims Hoosier Lottery overstated number, amount of prizes in 'Cash Blast' game
Two men filed a lawsuit Friday against the Hoosier Lottery, seeking class-action status as a result of the lottery's admitted misrepresentation of the number and amount of prizes available in a scratch-off game.
Jeff Frazer, Carmel, and Jeff Koehlinger, Auburn, seek reimbursement in the lawsuit filed in Marion County for the losses they incurred when playing the scratch-off game "Cash Blast."
Frazer purchased $40,000 of the $10 tickets and Koehlinger $2,470.
The game promised seven grand prizes of $250,000 each, plus several lesser prizes of up to $10,000 each.
But in July, after selling 5 million tickets, the lottery abruptly reduced the number and amount of prizes in the course of two weeks, according to the lawsuit, which was assigned to Marion Circuit Court.
"It was because the prizes never existed," said Richard Waples, Indianapolis, the plaintiffs' attorney.
"About 60,000 prizes weren't available that people were buying these tickets for," Waples said. "They said, 'Oops, sorry.' "
The Hoosier Lottery has admitted to overstating cash prizes in a statement on its Web site.
The lottery attributes the problem to a mistake in printing by the lottery's scratch-off vendor that affected up to 2.5 million tickets, which amounted to about $25 million spent on the potentially defective tickets.
However, the lottery maintains that the odds of winning were not compromised.
The lottery's new director, Kathryn Densborn, of Indianapolis, had no comment late Friday on the lawsuit.
She identified an attorney in the Indiana attorney general's office who is representing the lottery in the case. The attorney could not be reached for comment.
The lawsuit claims the lottery overstated the number and amount of prizes in the Cash Blast game by as much as $8 million from May 2005 to July 2006.
Frazer and Koehlinger complain that the lottery's advertising misled them into thinking the odds were on their side at the time they bought the scratch-off tickets.
"As the game wrapped up, the last 10 to 20 percent of the tickets being left, virtually all the prizes were still available," Frazer, 51, a real estate contractor, said Friday.
"And that's where a gamble becomes an investment. When you know every couple of tickets is going to be a nice winner, that's when you play hard," he said.
He said he doesn't often play lottery games. When he does, he said, he focuses on those with many prizes and few tickets remaining, winning several thousand dollars that way.
"That's the way that you play the lottery when you know you can't lose," he said.
This time he lost. Confused and suspicious that there may have been a problem with the tickets, he and Koehlinger separately contacted the lottery repeatedly by phone and e-mail about their concerns, but they say they were ignored.
When the problem with the ticket printing was discovered, both men received apologies from the lottery by e-mail, but the lottery refused to refund the money they spent on tickets.
Both men say lottery officials told them that despite the defective tickets, the losses could've been coincidence. The two men weren't convinced and contacted Waples, who fought and won a case last year against Hoosier Lottery regarding a man whose winnings were not paid when he presented his ticket.
The men want a court to order the lottery to refund money to any player affected by the problems in the scratch-off game and award any other appropriate compensation and attorney fees.
Frazer said he wonders, "If they did it with this game, how do we know they don't do it in other games? It's come down to a situation where, if they didn't know, they should've known."
This is going to be very interesting!!
I have a feeling this is going to get real juicy in court...!
Wow, talk about deceptive practices huh ?
I bet this happens alot more than we know, glad somebody with the muscle caught them
About 60,000 prizes weren't available that people were buying these tickets for," Waples said. "They said, 'Oops, sorry.' "
The Hoosier Lottery has admitted to overstating cash prizes in a statement on its Web site.
The lottery attributes the problem to a mistake in printing by the lottery's scratch-off vendor that affected up to 2.5 million tickets, which amounted to about $25 million spent on the potentially defective tickets.
However, the lottery maintains that the odds of winning were not compromised.
How in the world did they figure the odds were NOT compromised? Somebody must be in La-la Land. The Odds at that point were slim to none.
This is a good story. I hope the plaintiffs win.
The first problem is who spends 40 GRAND on scratch-offs? Wouldn't he be still to this day be checking them? Even the 2nd guy over 2 GRAND? The second problem is that scratch-offs normally state how many of the big prizes are still floating around BUT not saying how many NON-winners are, meaning the actual odds of a big prize could be whatever! WHICH IS WHY I stay away from the things most of the time.
"That one.. Cash Blast"
"Yes, sir, how many?"
"Give me four..."
"four?"
"...thousand. Four thousand, please."
"ok here you go, that'll be 40 thousand dollars.. good luck!" (beeping noise from forklift carrying out rolls of tickets)
According to the complaint filed in the lawsuit: http://wthr.images.worldnow.com/images/incoming/pdfs/Complaint.pdf
One of the plaintiffs, Jeff Frazer purchased no fewer than 4,000 none winning tickets after reading on the Hoosier Lottery website June 22,2006 that 80% of the "Cash Blast" tickets had been sold and seven (7) top prizes of $250,000 , seventy-five prizes of $10,000 and thousands of prizes of $50 and more were yet to be claimed. Two weeks later on July 7,2006 the numbers of prizes on the website were decreased to one top prize of $250,000 and ten prizes of $10,000 and no one had claimed any prizes leading the plaintiffs to conclude the prizes never existed.
It's not unusual for some one to buy a whole roll of scratch-off, several LP members claimed they or a group of friends have done it. I understand a roll contain 500-1000 tickets so it should be fairly easy to check if Mr Frazer tickets are from 4-8 rolls or if they are just a bunch of losing tickets from all over the place.
Let's see now. Five million tickets already sold with 10% to 20% remaining that's still half a million to a million tickets left and this guy buys 40,000 what are the odds of winning even with most of the prizes supposedly available? The judge should give him half his money back and order he take a lottery math class.
BobP
I am so glad that I don't live in that state........i hear so many stories about them being crooked.
Yes indeed ! The Hoosier Lottery gets yet another black mark to its file (like it already doesn't have enough) but this guy is just as much responsible. If I had $40,000 I didn't need, I would be using it to do many other things than purchase lottery tickets !
If I could afford to spend $40,000 on scratch-off tickets, I wouldn't be spending $40,000 on scratch-off tickets.
There are those who will say if they had an extra $10, they wouldn't spend it on a lottery ticket. There were others included in the complaint that claimed they spent over a $1,000 on those tickets, it's all relative to the amount of money you have to spend.
This has to be one of the most bizarre stories I've ever heard. $40k on scratchers? Wow...first of all, he needs his head examined. But, I do understand that he did the math, based on the number of top prizes available, and the odds of the overall game, and decided that if he had purchased that many, he would at least break-even. I get that. I still think his math was off though.
Now, for the lottery itself, this is another situation like the California case. There should be some sort of restitution based on what he bought. There is no way he could get 4000 losers in a row without some sort of tainting of the game. Just when you think the Hoosier Lottery couldn't do anything more stupid than they already have, they prove you wrong, yet again.
DITTO!!
I agree 40,000 times , Aye !!!!!
No, it's not "all relative." I'm saying that if I could afford to spend $40,000 on scratch-offs, that in itself would pretty well obviate the need or desire to do so. If I couldn't afford the $40,000 to spend on scratch-offs, it wouldn't be an issue at all for me.
There are lots of people of greater and lesser means who choose to play or not play lottery games, but there's not necessarily a direct correlation between the amount they spend and the amount they have available to spend.
The problem is a loser is still a loser, not matter how 'close' you get, or how many tickets you buy.
They GAMBLED and they LOST, send them to Vegas for the weekend and see how long they last there.
Lotteries don't want people to win big by spending a lot of money because then people with less won't play and there are more of them. Years ago when the Virgina lottery was won by an investment group that tried to buy every combinations when the jackpot cash amount exceeded the odds of winning they changed the rules for buying tickets so that could never happen again.
Recently Ohio Cash5 had a cash jackpot of nearly $900K with odds of 1:575K of being won, but no one tried to buy all the combinations as far as I know. When groups invest a large sum of money in a lottery and lose, they are going to want transparency on how the lottery operates while players who lose less than $200 are going to be content to contribute their losses to bad luck and forget about it.
It is my opinion that : If this case made it to the courts without being tossed out as frivilous or ludicrious , then there is merit to this case. Its not for one adult to tell another HOW to spend their money. It is our place to tell the lottery business that reaps in millions that they have a responisbility to advertise correctly and not grossly represent a current game.
I dont begrudge these guys for getting their day in court, whether it was two dollars or 40k, the courts are hearing the ISSUE at hand. Will indeed be interesting to read what the court decides...
The Hoosier Lottery seems to be saying there not much difference between slim and none. If your chances of winning a big prize are slim then if the prize never exists then your chances aren't effected enough to complain.
In other words when you enter a lottery game that they tell you your chances of losing are 95% what they really mean is your chances of losing are 95% ± 5%.
The article doesn't provide enough information, but it's entirely possible that the odds weren't compromised. If the available prizes were reduced by 25% and the number of available tickets was also reduced by 25% the odds would remain the same. If the proper odds were clearly listed, but the number of prizes was listed incorrectly the odds wouldn't change, but anyone trying to calculate odds based on available prizes and the number of tickets remaining to be sold would get the wrong answer.
He doesn't need his head examined, he needs it adjusted because there was never a guarantee. I'm firmly in the camp that figures anyone who can afford to "invest" $40k in something that will almost certainly be a losing investment doesn't need to play the lottery. As far as his math,he may have been right , but the article doesn't have enough factual information to know. I'll assume the game was supposed to return 50% of the ticket cost as prizes. If 20% of tickets were unsold and 40% or more of the prizes were still available you should expect to at least break even *on average*.
Without hearing more information I don't know if refunds might be warranted, but buying 4000 losers does nothing to indicate a problem with the game. You could buy all but 1 combination for MM or PB and still lose if the winning combination happens to be the one you didn't buy. That's the part he clearly didn't appreciate. The numbers that are in the article suggest he should have expected to lose money, but probability guarantees that losing was a possibility even if all of the prizes were still available, as long as the remaining tickets included 8000 losers.
when the lottery's reports that there are so many unsold tickets remaining in a scratch game and said tickets are supposedly several of the highest tier tickets. implying that the top tier tickets are still not sold yet. it implies that they are aware said tickets haven't been sold. Some people might deliberately go out and try and buy all the remaining tickets as this fellow did.
the article states he did his homework about the remaining tickets and with good intentions he purchased 40 grand worth of tickets. Shoulda won coulda won, but didn't win any substantial amount and took action to recover his money based on the fact that there must not have been any jackpot tickets remaining since all the tickers were accounted for and the so called remaining jackpot prizes weren't clamed.
i think the guy is justified in doing what he did in fact i think he should not only recover his money but get some more for uncovering a flaw in the game and misconduct on the lottery and ticket printers part.
I think the point is being missed, the Hoosier lottery got caught cheating!
With all the technology that is available, there is no excuse for the state
to think prizes are still available and report them to be available on their
web site when that is not the case. If I buy a MM ticket in Illinois the state
of Georgia knows what numbers I have chosen. They know if they have a winner
and what states it comes out of in a matter of minutes and thats not just for
jackpot prizes. So I know scratchers can be tracked the same way and they only
have to worry about their 1 state. I think it was false advertising, if they didnt report
all those prizes still being available then all of those tickets would not have sold. It would
have to take someone to buy 40,000 worth to expose the truth, thats the gamble the
Hoosier Lottery took and they lost. Hope they loose in court as well!
RJOh gave a link to the pdf of the lawsuit which makes some highly interesting points. It's no more difficult to read than the article.
http://wthr.images.worldnow.com/images/incoming/pdfs/Complaint.pdf
LMAO Now that was funny.... I wonder if his insurance covers Carpal Tunnel for his wrist when he is done =)) Any who this IS gonna be vewy vewy interesting
Tee Hee hee I love this man he always knows his * bleep* Heya RJOH!!!!!!!
What a great case! I think the plaintiffs will win.
All I ever hear is bad news out of the Indiana lottery! Any good news?