Dozens of 'dead people' collected NJ lottery prizes last year

Comment #40

BellasBMWLucki — Fri, 13 Mar 2015 00:47:55 GMT

I do not attempt cash 4 life,as i watch very closely per week to see whose winning.

Many i've seen in the store literally standing there bemoaning insofar as, why no winner$ for literally MONTHS!

SMH. i think the last cash 4 so called life was four to five months or longer ago,so not worth it...GLAD I DON'T PLAY.

---

i think i attempted 1x.or 2 maximum.Not worth it.I think the game shall cease soon enough just like horrid Monopoly.

adios

Comment #39

mypiemaster — Sun, 22 Feb 2015 11:38:35 GMT

You are absolutely correct. They all have skull and bones in their closets to varying degrees. Sooner or later, those skeletons start getting uneasy and start popping their bony heads out of the closets, to the detriment of the lottery gods. Sometimes the lottery gods don't give a rats ass about the controversies generated by these incidents, so far as they are making good money. We love to have those skeletons in the closets exposed.

Comment #38

eddessaknight — Sat, 21 Feb 2015 21:40:58 GMT

Perhaps it's time the greedy government, who produce nothing, take the good example of other world authorities and just let the hard working men women, who win this once in a lifetime, have all their winnings - imagine how that would increase participating tkx sales

Remember the classic story of the reapers?

Maybe government should spend their time chasing the fraudulent underground food stamps systematic looting of the public trust treasury by welfare cheats $$$

Fortes Fortuna Juv... [ More ]

Comment #37

jjtheprince — Sat, 21 Feb 2015 20:05:07 GMT

Maybe all lotteries should be banned in NJ.

Comment #36

riscknight — Sat, 21 Feb 2015 19:48:40 GMT

Funny also how many dead folks kept 'receiving' their pensions every month here in Greece... I reckon it has to do something with the 'Walking Dead'... no other explanation...

Comment #35

CDanaT — Sat, 21 Feb 2015 15:40:14 GMT

Good point Stack.....we do not in Texas,nor was it done in Florida when I was there. Unless you have to provide a SS card(in your respective state) with your ID to claim the $600 - $5000 range(which we do not in Texas if you produce a valid drivers license or a few other types of ID). We only have to LIST a SS# on the claim form for any prize range of $25.00 or more.....Could we have a failure to pay in this winning range ? possibly if all agencies are not linked to a common point with names and... [ More ]

Comment #34

Raven62 — Sat, 21 Feb 2015 12:16:32 GMT

It's True: Their is Life After Death

Comment #33

Raven62 — Sat, 21 Feb 2015 12:13:28 GMT

Maybe the same thing is going on in other States too: It just hasn't been detected and exposed there Yet

Comment #32

loonasee2 — Sat, 21 Feb 2015 12:04:05 GMT

They make enough money on the front side,no need to squeeze the back side with taxes.People that win are going to spend it usually in there local economy,and the merry go-around turns.

Comment #31

CARBOB — Sat, 21 Feb 2015 11:49:14 GMT

Those are mostly Democrats...

Comment #30

myturn — Sat, 21 Feb 2015 11:46:40 GMT

A lot of 'dead people' also vote in New Jersey

Comment #29

Dahoss — Sat, 21 Feb 2015 09:40:36 GMT

Must be the same people who voted for Obama

Comment #28

Stack47 — Sat, 21 Feb 2015 05:51:29 GMT

Carole Hedinger, executive director of the state lottery, responded to the audit noting that the 680 suspicious Social Security numbers represents a very small portion of all claims, and the auditor was unable to substantiate whether these 680 'questionable' Social Security numbers were indeed fraudulent.

Apparently it's not that prevalent in NJ.

Comment #27

luckorfate777 — Sat, 21 Feb 2015 03:50:01 GMT

Agreed. I wonder how prevalent this issue is in other states.

Comment #26

Stack47 — Sat, 21 Feb 2015 03:45:59 GMT

If your prize is over $599.50, you can claim it at your New Jersey Lottery Retailer or at New Jersey Lottery Headquarters.

I never won over $599.50 in NJ so I don't know if they pay cash on the spot for tickets over that and under $5000, but I was paid the same day in cash in Michigan, Ohio, PA, WVA, and KY. The people using phoney SS numbers probably have a fake picture ID to go along with it and probably easier to fool the people at lottery headquarters than a savvy clerk.

Most states... [ More ]

Comment #25

haymaker — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 19:40:08 GMT

represents a very small portion of all claims

Translation: we can't be bothered to fix this.

There will always be people who game the system no matter what.

Comment #24

HaveABall — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 19:11:24 GMT

KY Floyd, this article failed to mention that all prizes at $600 or above MUST be claimed [and taxed] at an official NJ Lottery Headquarters' remote office or corporate location.

Comment #23

dpoly1 — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 17:15:52 GMT

AND

They voted early and often LOL

Comment #22

TheGameGrl — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 16:38:29 GMT

Good Joke Cointoss! Loved it!

Maybe it took the lottery that long to mail out the winnings that the person had done up and left this world?

Besides, there is no national(country) restriction on who can claim a prize whether they have a US social # or not, so that does need to be factor'd into the claims/audit.

Comment #21

JoeBigLotto — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 16:32:33 GMT

This doesn't surprise me .Well they said you are more likely to be struck by lightening than win the lottery but nobody has actually calculated the odds for dead people to win . As we can see here dead people have better odds than living people because lightening can't kill them or already did lol. But it takes two to tangle so if half dozen dead people now play and win it means probably some half dozen dead people are now working in the lottery department too.

Comment #20

dr65 — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 15:59:07 GMT

The only thing I'm sick about in this article is PA is picking up another game.

Odds of 1 in 21 million? Keep it.

Manage what you have PA and stop showering us with favors which, btw, aren't for us, they're

for you.

This business of inadequate job performance is so typical in state after state. They are masters at

launching new games and keeping up with the Jones's but when it comes to taking care of their

own, the fail miserably. Do you think they care about back child support... [ More ]

Comment #19

mypiemaster — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 12:56:33 GMT

Simply put, NJ Lottery dropped the ball. They can try to shift the blame all they want. Yeah right, blame it on the Zombies.

Comment #18

Gleno — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 12:47:01 GMT

Anything can happen in NJ is the current marketing theme of the NJ Lottery Commission.

The message between the lines is that they are looking out for all those winners of $600.00 prizes.

The dead shall rise has a new meaning in N.J.

Comment #17

Jacko1942 — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 12:29:23 GMT

It seems to me that some retailers by their own tickets and we come in the store to buy instant tickets the numbers are very low why is this

Comment #16

Seattlejohn — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 10:42:40 GMT

That's why there needs to anonymity if you win big in the lottery. States claim there has to be transparency, to prevent lottery scams . But, by the looks of things in Jersey, transparency means nothing as their lottery was scammed tons of times. And, if they win big, the lottery commission creates problems for the winners by their attempts to promote publicize their winnings. Yes, there needs to be anonymity if you win big, despite what the lottery commission says...

Comment #15

myturn — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 10:05:26 GMT

Multi-million dollar lottery winners instantly become targets by criminals, scam artists, and thieves. If they win a large enough Mega Millions jackpot, it can seem as if the entire country has placed a target on their backs.

Comment #14

KY Floyd — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 08:00:23 GMT

You might want to read the article, which clearly says that it happens with prizes of $600 or more.

In NJ, and most other states, anything over $600 has to be claimed at a lottery office. It shouldn't be that hard for a state agency to make sure that a winner is correctly identified, in which case an incorrect social security number won't be a big problem. When they find out the withholdings were credited to the wrong person, they should know the identity of the person who gave them the wrong... [ More ]

Comment #13

Coin Toss — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 07:35:51 GMT

Chicago joke: My grandfather voted Republican all his life until he died. Since then he's been voting democrat

Comment #12

Raven62 — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 03:53:46 GMT

And Here: All Along I Thought They Were Politicians!

What's a Politician: Someone That Does Nothing for Voters, but Raise Taxes

Comment #11

maximumfun — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 02:26:44 GMT

I love New Jersey.

Comment #10

dognabit — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 02:16:10 GMT

Who knew The Walking Dead was a documentary.

Comment #9

noise-gate — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 02:13:27 GMT

Same with California- only with us it's ..$599.00 and over.

Comment #8

sully16 — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 00:24:09 GMT

We have this in Detroit, but we call them voters.

Comment #7

Raven62 — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 23:17:48 GMT

Ghosting is a form of identity theft in which someone steals the identity, and sometimes even the role within society, of a specific dead person (the ghost ) who is not widely known to be deceased. Usually, the person who steals this identity (the ghoster ) is roughly the same age that the ghost would have been if still alive, so that any documents citing the birthdate of the ghost will not be conspicuously incorrect if appropriated by the thief now claiming to be that person.

The use of c... [ More ]

Comment #6

maringoman — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 23:00:01 GMT

I did not know that about. In MA any prize over $600 has to be claimed at one of the Mass Lottery claim centers where they confirm your identity and take the government cut. They have been doing this for over 10 years. Taxachusetts don't play

Comment #5

lejardin — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 22:51:31 GMT

They have taken claiming anonymously to a new level lol.

Comment #4

Stack47 — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 22:47:55 GMT

What you're forgetting is any retailer can validate tickets, pay winnings up to $5000 so you're asking an average store clerk to do police work. There are about 150 lottery employees to cover 6100 retailers. The best suggestion might be creating cashing agents for prizes over $600 and paying those retailers extra if they expect them to do the police work.

Comment #3

Gleno — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 22:35:10 GMT

Looks like another game, Cash4Life is being looked at closer.

What was the cost to promote this game?

Thought the companies that put these games together would have a better handle on what they are promoting.

The retailers will be,no doubt, forced to check ID on those $600.00 prizes, in the future.

Comment #2

maringoman — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 21:59:52 GMT

NJ Lottery needs to do a much better job catching these cheats. For a government agency I would give it a grade F given the fact that it can easily verify the identity of winners. I usually give government agencies a grade C

It is interesting to see that Cash 4 Life is adding VA PA.

Comment #1

Scratch$ — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 21:36:58 GMT

No surprise here! The authorities need to investigate, arrest, prosecute and sentence these crooks whenever possible.

Dozens of 'dead people' collected NJ lottery prizes last year

Lottery Post — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 21:32:35 GMT

Nearly four dozen New Jersey lottery winners collected their prizes with false Social Security numbers belonging to dead people, according to an audit of the state lottery system.

The audit also found that the lottery missed out on recovering $890,000 that winners owed in taxes and other obligations for the fiscal year that ended last June.

The report, released Wednesday, said 680 people who won at least $600 presented potentially invalid IDs from July 2013 to July 2014.

People are requ... [ More ]