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Tenn. lawmakers want to force lottery to drop computer drawsNews Story
There is new discussion in the Tennessee Legislature about the possibility of the state lottery going back to using ping-pong balls to select the Cash 3 and Cash 4 winners. In 2007, a computer programming error prevented anyone who played repeated digits, such as two fives in a row, from winning. The error was discovered Aug. 20 when lottery officials contacted the system designer, Smartplay, about their concerns. The lottery is asking Smartplay, and the company that certified the syste
Mar 26, 2008, 9:08 pm - Lottery News

Tenn. Lottery audit: players spent $2 million on worthless ticketsNews Story
Lottery responded too slowly; problem fixed 10 minutes after finding it The Tennessee Lottery made a series of missteps and oversights after a software glitch began generating faulty winning numbers last year, and players bought about $2 million worth of unwinnable tickets before the error was found, according to a state audit. The sweeping audit from state Comptroller John G. Morgan reviewed the entire episode between July 28 and Aug. 20, when a programming glitch caused no duplicate digi
Mar 19, 2008, 10:48 am - Lottery News

Glitch in lottery system, N.L. woman saysNews Story
A lottery player in Newfoundland says there could be a problem with Atlantic Lottery tickets after she says she was denied her prize. Elaine Wells, of Foxtrap in Conception Bay South, says she bought a Lotto 6/49 ticket in January and won $20 on the TAG feature. But when she went to a ticket retailer to claim her prize, the lottery corporation's scanner at the store didn't register the ticket as a winner. After checking the numbers, she says was convinced her ticket was a winner. She conta
Mar 10, 2008, 9:33 am - Lottery News

Tennessee Lottery glitch parade marches onNews Story
Lottery calls first glitch of the new year 'minor' The new year brought another glitch to the Tennessee lottery, this time with a miscounting Web site clock. The clock is supposed to show the number of days until the Jan. 22 grand prize drawing for the Million $ Madness game. Instead, as the new year dawned, the clock began showing the wrong number of days. It was showing 86 days when James Hawkins logged on to the Web site about 5:30 p.m. New Year's Day. Although the clock show
Jan 2, 2008, 10:40 pm - Lottery News

Lottery may be top talk among Tennessee legislators this sessionNews Story
Recent questions about the Tennessee state lottery could become political football in the upcoming legislative session. Monday, state lottery officials tried to assure lawmakers that a summer glitch will not happen again. Some, like House Leader and state representative Jason Mumpower, aren't buying the answers. Of the $3.7 billion in total sales, approximately $2 billion of that has been awarded to players but most importantly we have raised $1 billion for the education program that
Dec 11, 2007, 7:32 pm - 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

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