Wednesday, 28 November 2018

Nebraska Lottery Won’t Pay out Game’s Misprinted Tickets

Dozens of Nebraska Lottery players won’t be paid after buying misprinted winning tickets from a holiday scratch-off game.

The mistake made by International Game Technology, the manufacturer of the tickets, was identified in September. As a result, Nebraska Lottery cancelled its Holiday Bonus Bucks game, but 405 tickets were already sold before they discovered the issue within two hours since the game’s launch.

The misprinted tickets represent winnings from a few dollars to up to USD$40,000. However, according to Nebraska Lottery director Brian Rockey, the state lottery is not legally obligated to pay out tickets that are issued in error.

“We’ve never had anything like this, to this degree. It was a real fluke,” said Rockey.

“I’m glad we were able to catch it when we did, or there would be many more disappointed people,”

Connie Johnson, who lives in Lincoln, was one of the players who happened to have purchased misprinted Holiday Bonus Bucks tickets. Her tickets carry multiple USD$40,000 winning combinations, but she soon learnt that there was an error when they were printed.

The Nebraska Lottery is now requesting Holiday Bonus Bucks players to return the tickets by 24th March. The state lottery will give out Lottery scratch vouchers in return.

Neil Watson, a spokesman of the Nebraska Lottery, said 150 misprinted tickets have been returned so far. A total of 80 players became “winners” due to incorrectly printed symbols, and 52 others were led to think they had won larger prizes than the actual amount tied to the cards.