Search

Some lottery winners missing their jackpotsNews Story
True story: Elderly man reads the newspaper every morning in the bathroom. He dies. Widow picks up the old papers, finds a Powerball ticket. Her kids insist: Mom, check it out. She does just in time! Widow claims a $100,000 prize the day before the ticket expires. That story from Karen Emery, deputy director of the Arizona Lottery is a rare happy ending in the history of long-lost lottery tickets. More than a half-billion dollars in lottery prizes went uncollected last y
Dec 6, 2007, 7:14 am - Lottery News

NY Lottery says it goofed: Mahopac winner got $31 million after taxesNews Story
The New York State Lottery has acknowledged that it made a $14 million mistake when it announced the amount of last week's Mega Millions award to a Putnam County man at Grand Central Terminal. The winning ticket bought by William James Albertson from Mahopac actually brought him an after-tax prize of $30.7 million. At the big announcement, presided over by Lottery Director Gordon Medenica and Lottery announcers Yolanda Vega and Ralph Buckley, Lottery staff told reporters that Albertson would
Nov 16, 2007, 8:29 pm - Lottery News

Tennessee Lottery oversight meeting delayedNews Story
Update (Nov. 9, 2007, 11:18 am): See below for rescheduled date and time. The Joint Lottery Oversight Committee in Tennessee, which was scheduled to meet this month to discuss the many problems recently plaguing the Tennessee Lottery, has been delayed. The meeting was originally scheduled for November 26th. According to a note sent by a co-chair's staff member, the delay is due to the fact that two ongoing audits have not yet been completed. Both audits will be discussed at the upcomin
Nov 8, 2007, 4:57 pm - Lottery News

Indiana lottery players still hunting year-old jackpotNews Story
Lottery Post noted for raising awareness More than a year has fallen off the calendar since someone last claimed a Hoosier Lotto jackpot, an unprecedented drought that's raising eyebrows in addition to fueling ticket sales and pushing tonight's grand prize to a record $53.5 million. I just am stunned, said Mike Krueger, a regular Hoosier Lotto player from Whiting. And a lot of other Lottery players and the people at the stores where I play are like, 'Why hasn't it been hit?' Is somet
Oct 31, 2007, 10:34 am - Lottery News

Tennessee Lottery refuses to revert to ball drawingsNews Story
Lottery players won't see any balls popping up with winning Cash 3 and Cash 4 numbers on them, at least not for the time being. The Tennessee Lottery Board decided Monday to keep using computers to pick numbers in the two games, despite calls for a change back to a ball-draw system. Board members said they wanted to wait until auditors completed their final reports on a computer coding error that kept non-repeating numbers like 1-1-2 or 5-5-5-5 from being drawn. They also noted that sales
Oct 31, 2007, 8:32 am - Lottery News

Tenn. Lottery asks firms to pay cost for errorNews Story
Letters seeking $1.4 million are sent to 2 vendors Tennessee Lottery officials have asked two vendors to pay a total of $1.4 million to make up for losses caused by a computer coding error that compromised the Cash 3 and Cash 4 games in August. Lottery CEO Rebecca Paul Hargrove and two board members disclosed the figure during a meeting Tuesday with The Tennessean's editorial board. Letters demanding the payment were sent to Smartplay International, the vendor that supplied the computer
Oct 31, 2007, 7:35 am - Lottery News

Tenn. Lottery CEO claims sales unhurt by numerous errorsNews Story
Tennessee Lottery chief Rebecca Hargrove said Monday there's no sign that players have lost confidence despite a daily drawings computer glitch. A July switch to computerized drawings had incorrectly prevented repeat numbers in the drawings until a programming error was fixed in August. The error meant that no winning draw included duplicate numerals, so any ticket holder who had bet on a number like 2-2-1 or 7-7-7-7 wasn't going to win. But quarterly sales for Cash 3 tickets sales rose 5
Oct 29, 2007, 11:01 pm - Lottery News

Tenn. players picked up on new odds before lottery revealed glitchNews Story
Updated! Includes illustrative charts below. Somebody knew. Or somebody caught on. An analysis of 55 million tickets played in the Cash 3 and Cash 4 lottery games shows that in August, more people started playing the numbers most likely to come up. That is the time period when a glitch in a new computerized system of picking numbers prevented duplicating combinations such as 1-1-2 or 3-3-3-3 from being drawn. A Tennessean computer analysis indicates that players either knew or figu
Oct 28, 2007, 7:43 am - Lottery News

Tenn. Lottery CEO claims recent errors didn't hurt salesNews Story
Lottery sponsor questions move to computerized drawings Three recent mistakes made by the Tennessee Lottery have not hurt ticket sales, the lottery's president and CEO said, but the legislator who led the effort to create the lottery questions the lottery's move to computerized drawings. At this point, sales in our products are up, so it hasn't had any impact that we can measure at all, Rebecca Hargrove said Wednesday. We're almost 4 years old, and we've had three incidences, which if t
Oct 7, 2007, 9:26 am - Lottery News

FLASH: Tennessee Lottery audit won't investigate drawing errorsNews Story
Out-of-control situation gets worse Legislators shocked to learn investigation won't study why errors occurred The Tennessee Lottery hired an outside auditor after a computer issue affected the Cash 3 and Cash 4 games in August, but the auditor will not examine why the system failed. Lottery officials previously said KPMG would be paid about $90,000 to look into the problem that kept repeat numbers from being drawn for those games for more than three weeks in August. But a letter ob
Oct 3, 2007, 12:02 pm - Lottery News