Phantom wins: Lottery compensates players misled by false prizes
By Kate Northrop
The Hoosier Lottery has announced that it is offering cash payments for scratch-off tickets that had appeared to win big prizes but were in fact misprints.
After a "technical error" in the Hoosier Lottery's "Space Invaders Cash Invasion" scratch-off game had players believing they won prizes that didn't actually exist, the Lottery announced a payout resolution for the tickets that were impacted.
In June, the Lottery released a Space Invaders-themed scratch-off game, but it was quickly pulled from retailers after players started revealing big wins only to be denied the prizes.
One player's Reddit post garnered thousands of upvotes and swaths of commenters urging the player to seek legal advice after his ticket showed a $100,000 win supposedly in line with the game rules printed on the ticket.
The debacle came down to a "printing error where some tickets appeared to show a prize different from what was recorded on the lottery commission's official validation record," a Lottery representative had explained to Nexstar.
Players were and are still able to complete a Protest Form on the Lottery's website and mail in affected tickets, as long as the "Space Invaders Cash Invasion" ticket pertains to the #2624 version of the game and not the newer #2666 edition.
After running its investigation on the game, the Hoosier Lottery found that 252 tickets were affected by the printing error, Fox59 said, and the Lottery is offering consolation payouts to those affected.
It may not be the take-home players had hoped for, but at least it's something. The consolation payout amount on impacted tickets depends on the misprinted amount players found on their ticket.
Misprinted amounts of $10-$499 receive $25, $500-$2,499 receive $100, $2,500-$5,999 receive $500, and finally, amounts of $100,000 and more receive $10,000.
According to the Lottery, those payout amounts are larger than what is required to be administered to players by state law, and that the money is not coming from taxpayer dollars.
"The Hoosier Lottery remains committed to paying all valid tickets and to operating in accordance with Indiana law and our administrative rules," the Lottery says on its website.
The Lottery has since relaunched the $5 "Space Invaders Cash Invasion" scratch-off game. As of now, there are two out of three top prizes of $100,000, 18 out of 28 second-tier prizes of $2,500, and 412 out of 683 third-tier prizes of $500 remaining. The overall odds of winning any prize in the game are 1 in 3.70.
Wow!!!. This is partly the reason that some people keep yelling that the lottery is rigged. If you screw up, and get caught, society tries to hold you accountable. If the lottery screws up, and gets caught, they try to bury it under some legalese. Why should the customer be forced to bear the burden of your screw up. If your product is not ready, don't put it out there, and then try to hide under some legalese when it comes time to pay up. I'm glad that they managed to squeeze something out of that turnip. There outta be a law because this is very annoying.
"there outta be a law"
There is a law. It defines a winning ticket (which these are not).
$10,000 for a non-winning $100,000 ticket is a huge bonus. Casinos give nothing to malfunctioning slot machine players. Maybe a free meal for a malfunctioning $100,000 reel combination.
Whether printed tickets or an electronic machine, errors are extremely rare, thankfully.
the lottery should have blamed actual space invading aliens for messing up their scratch offs.
Good one!
If they ever come up with a Tetris ticket with a misprint it wil get real interesting!
Good on Indiana for doing this considering legally state law says they only had to reimburse the cost of the ticket or offer a replacement ticket. So all those players should be so grateful to get money from losing and non claimer tickets. Especially the ones who are getting 10K when the actual barcode win was $20.
People kept saying sue sue sue but I wonder what the legal basis would have been to sue. It was a genuine mistake. How do you realise it was a mistake but still demand 100K? How do you sue for something you know you didn't win? It might be different if they scanned the barcode and it showed 100K but the lottery tried not to honor it. The winning details of every ticket are registered within every barcode, regardless of what the scratch surface displays in case of an error. In this case, the barcodes showed the actual amount so it really was just a printing error.