Excellent point, Uncle Jim, and thanks for catching that glaring oversight.
The figures, no matter how one juggles them, just don't add up at the Hoosier Lottery, and I believe that's one reason they're so secretive about their sales data; giving up that information would pretty much seal their coffins.
In 2004, we did manage to get some sales records, but their official figures (the ones published in their annual report) were vastly different and much lower than those we received from DeLoitte & Touche. Also, the report former Director Jack Ross prepared for then-Representative Bob Alderman proves, without a doubt, that there is a skim operation in place. Of course, they don't skim so much as they shovel; during the two fiscal years 2003 and 2004, the Hoosier Lottery "misplaced" $263 million dollars. It simply vanished into thin air; no one knows where it went, and no one on an official level is about to ask any other officials any embarrassing questions. Consequently, the money just "stays missing."
Keep a very close eye on the keepers of your shiny new technological wonder, Tennessee players, and take EVERY opportunity to let them know you're watching them. Write complaints to your attorney general, your congressmen and senators, the FBI (Ha! good luck with that one), your local newspaper editors, Dolly Parton and anyone else you can think of. The most effective way to defeat this menace is to attack it before it can gain a solid footing. Write those complaints even if you believe nothing funny is going on yet.
We didn't have that opportunity, because they slipped the stupid thing under the door when no one was looking, and they failed to tell us they had changed the format. The only "public announcement" the Hoosier Lottery made concerning their "RNG" (I hesitate to call it that - their first RNG was an algorithm running on a 386 Intel chip!) was buried 20 or 30 pages deep on their web site.
The Hoosier Lottery lost over $100 million in sales and revenue in fiscal 2000, the first year they used their money machine. Those figures didn't begin to return to pre-RNG levels until 2003, and I suspect that's when our troubles actually began. This is when they began a serious campaign to develop and produce as many scratch-off games as they could imagine and, believe me, they have very active imaginations. Within a year, scratch-off sales exceeded online sales for the first time, according to their annual report; but the payouts, even for scratch-off tickets, were ridiculously low. We figured it out once, and I believe the aggregate payouts for the year worked out to around 34% for all of their games, including scratch-offs. In their 2003 annual report, they list an expenditure of $4 million for "furniture and fixtures." The furniture LosingJeff and I saw at Hoosier Lottery headquarters that summer must have been at least thirty years old, but no one at headquarters knew what I was talking about when I called four months later and asked where I might see that furniture. They explained that they didn't actually buy $4 million worth of furniture, but that it was an "accounting procedure that the accountants use to balance the books."
Uh-huh ... of course it is ...
Even if I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt (which I'm not), even if, by some divine attack of conscience, they told me the truth (which I doubt), it's still fraud, because it's published in their annual report, a copy of which must be filed with the Securities Exchange Commission.
I guess I went a little off-topic. This thread is about the Tennessee Lottery, not about the Hoosier Lottery. Oh well; I'm not deleting it now. Anyway, I hope I've given you poor saps some things to watch out for, and I hope you're more successful in your battle against the dark forces than I was. At least you guys had some warning, so you have a leg up on LosingJeff and me.
Bury your RNG, and dump those elected officials who support it. That's the best advice I can give you - BURY IT NOW, while you still can; bury it with a shovel and then bury the shovel (you'll have to use your hands for that, I guess).