Players who claimed prizes under wrong numbers can keep their winnings
By Kate Northrop
The Iowa Lottery attributed posting the wrong Powerball numbers on their website for Monday's draw to a "human reporting error" and told players who already redeemed prizes that they can keep the winnings.
Several hours after the wrong Powerball numbers were posted on the Iowa Lottery's website the night of the drawing on Mon., Nov. 27, the Lottery removed the incorrect sequence and republished the actual winning numbers.
The wrong numbers were posted on the Lottery's website at about 12:30 am Tuesday and were removed from the website at around 7:15 am that same morning. Prize payouts for those incorrect results were subsequently halted once the incorrect results were taken down and when the Lottery suspended payouts while they fixed the problem.
The nature of the error involved accidental confusion between the regular Powerball drawing results and the Powerball Double Play results, which is an extra drawing occurring immediately after the regular Powerball drawing that players can enter as part of an add-on feature.
Iowa Lottery staff members who made the mistake inputted the first five Double Play numbers as the first five regular Powerball numbers, so both sets of numbers for the two drawings were identical, Mary Neubauer, Lottery Vice President of External Relations told Lottery Post. Those numbers mistakenly entered for the Powerball drawing — but were correct for that night's Double Play drawing — were 9, 29, 51, 53, and 61. The correct Powerball numbers for Monday's draw were 2, 21, 38, 61, and 66.
Tickets that held those false winning numbers were only valid for a prize payout between when they were posted on the Lottery's central gaming system and when the Lottery realized the error and suspended the checking and cashing of Powerball tickets. Players who tried to scan or cash a Powerball ticket at a lottery terminal during the suspension received a message reading, "Draw has not occurred, more draws remain."
Once the correct results were inputted into the Lottery's system, checking and cashing resumed. From that point on, the only tickets that were eligible to win prizes were those that had the actual winning numbers on them.
Players who did claim a prize under the incorrect sequence are allowed to keep their winnings, the Lottery advised. 3,998 players won a Powerball prize ranging from $4 top $200 under the correct numbers, for a total of $24,382 in winnings paid out to Iowa players from Monday's drawing.
Neubauer said the number of false winning tickets that held the incorrect combination was less than the number of tickets that had the actual winning combination. The Lottery is not concentrating on the total payout for the incorrect numbers because they are ineligible to claim a prize at this point, but they are still looking into the number of tickets that were cashed during the brief period they were eligible.
The "human error" that caused the slip-up involves a checks and balances system the Iowa Lottery has in place to report the correct numbers from the Multi-State Lottery Association (MUSL), the organization that operates the Powerball game.
This process is done by hand. When the Iowa Lottery receives the winning numbers from MUSL, two Iowa Lottery staff members in two different locations manually enter those numbers into the Iowa Lottery central gaming system. The check and balance there is that, ideally, both staff members should independently enter the same exact number sequence each time to ensure that more than one set of human eyes is verifying and accurately reporting the results. In this case, both individuals verified the wrong set of numbers, the Double Play numbers, as the regular Powerball results.
The Lottery's central gaming system is what connects all lottery terminals and self-service kiosks across the state. Whatever winning numbers for a drawing are entered into the central gaming system are essentially synchronized with all these player- and retailer-facing services. That's why Iowan players with the incorrect winning numbers were able to successfully scan a ticket and claim a prize.
"We have redundancy in that system where one person in one location and another person in another location enters the numbers that is designed to be a double-check and a check and balance in the process, and unfortunately both people who were in two different locations both entered the incorrect numbers this time," Neubauer explained to Lottery Post. "There is always a learning opportunity in these situations, as tough as it can be, but we're certainly looking at how we can make improvements as we move ahead."
Neubauer also explained that each state has their own set of practices to verify and report results from MUSL, but it's important to note that every state's procedures has been specifically approved by MUSL as part of their own review of security standards.
A big reason why the Iowa Lottery validates and posts results by hand is because it involves a human element of verification as opposed to computer automation, which can be susceptible to it's own set of unique problems.
"It's a double-edged sword — people have concerns about automation and machine gaming and how involved computers are in the lottery process," Neubauer related. "There's a check and a balance there, and any system you put in place has errors involved — nothing is fool proof."
The Iowa Lottery reported the incident as "human reporting error" and that, my friends, is what it was and nothing else.
Trying to spin another conspiracy theory won't be beneficial to anyone.
Onward we forge ahead, got my MM with MP for Fridays drawing.
I believe winning the lottery jackpot is a 💯 % factor of luck.
May Fortuna, goddess of chance or lot vindicate me.
As long as they paid the winners of the original numbers, it's okay.
How would they pay the WRONG numbers? So they are saying a human ENTERS the winning numbers into their system, which would then explain how they paid the wrong numbers. I guess I thought MUSL would send each state systems the numbers electrically so their system would not be able to pay the wrong numbers.
Maybe Tipton was up to his shenanigans again. I too thought the #'s were transposed electronically, not electrically (lol). On our lottery website it says not responsible for posting wrong numbers.
Like I wrote to Todd & Kate our lottery machines grey out on all draw games from 0200-0500 so you may not play or check #'s. Perhaps someone from Iowa could elaborate on this?
The quality control/checks and balances system is alive and kicking at the Iowa Lottery, I see.....Bless their lil hearts.
I wonder how many people went on the website during the suspension to check their PB tickets and saw the DP numbers and said, "Well I didn't win" and then trashed the tickets. Then later on heard about the wrong numbers being posted and were panicking trying to find their tickets thinking what if...
That's always the scenario that bothers me as well.
I guess the best thing to do would be to save them until at least the next drawing and check them a second time. By then any errors should be corrected and reposted.
I save every ticket I buy for the entire year, unless it is a winner in which it's surrendered when cashed in.
I had a related question. How does LP and Todd get all the state lottery numbers posted so quickly? I know someone cannot be typing in all those numbers.
Saving all your tickets for an entire year unless they are winners is a good thing to do. Unfortunately most people don't do that, which is why there are more and more unclaimed lottery jackpots each year. Other things play into it as well, there are a lot of new people who play the lottery and don't understand the prize scale. They will throw a ticket away if ALL the numbers don't match the numbers drawn that night. They don't realize prized can still be won if only some of the numbers match. I think the main thing that happens, most people don't have a specific place that they store their tickets, then they just forget where they put them.
This must be the most ridiculous check and balance system I've ever seen. Everyone knows that it doesn't matter how many people "independently" enter the data, there should always be another set of eyes, who didn't do the data entry, signing off that the data entered is accurate.
I know someone somewhere decided that the probability of 2 people entering the same inaccurate numbers would be next to nil, but they work for the lottery, where the chances of winning are also next to nil and yet it happens, so...
Saving your lotto receipts and scratcher cards for a year is also good for tax purposes. If you itemize your deductions and want to successfully defend against an IRS audit, then it makes sense to save them for a year.
Saving them for a year is also useful for 2nd chance online entry every quarter year or so, if your State has that lotto incentive.
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Concerning the story: Double human redundancy was not good enough. I recommend triple redundancy, with the 3rd being computer automated, to protect against identical double human error.
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Tip: Thermally printed receipts, such as lotto receipts, are coated with BPA (Bisphenal A), which mimics the human hormone, estrogen. If you handle BPA coated receipts, and then use an alcohol based hand sanitizer, the BPA gets absorbed into the blood and urine at very high levels! Even without hand sanitizer, handling food after touching BPA coated receipts results in BPA entering the body, detected in both blood and urine. The solution is to wash your hands with soap after handling thermally printed receipts.
I learned of this about a decade ago from a science-based podcast. It is still not widely known today. Doing my part in spreading the helpful info.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4206219/