http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2014/12/lottery_flap_leaves_store_out_of_luck

Long story short, a mentally handicapped woman brought in a scratch ticket to RD's Deli & Market convenience store and was told the ticket was worth $1,000. The store cashed the ticket for her, giving her back only $950 because $50 is typically deducted for taxes. The woman's family thought it was worth a lot more, so they contacted lottery headquarters.

Now this is the part that makes me feel uncomfortable:


"the vendor that printed the game was able to determine that there was a $10,000 winning ticket in the book sold at RD’s Deli."

Now the woman eventually got the entire $10,000 and the store lost it's license to sell lottery, but what's got me wondering is the part about the ticket vendor being able to find out whether there's a big winner in any particular book of tickets.

So if I work for the vendor, and I can find out the book numbers of every big prize ticket, what's to stop me or my friends/associates from buying every ticket in those books when one of those books is located in a store and having my friends/associates cash in the winning tickets? Just the idea that the vendor has a record of the book numbers for every big winning ticket creeps me out ... especially because I've seen ticket buyers question the book number before buying tickets.

The threat of jail time... that's the preventative...

The amount of time and energy you would spend to convince your associates to commit this kind of fraud aren't worth it. Plus you'd have to have to many accomplices that there's bound to be a leak...

Interesting. I think Ren's got the line on it, but it sure does raise questions.

I think it would be very hard to prove a non-relative had won on a scratch ticket because of the help of an employee. When it comes to lottery and really all forms of gambling, there's a lot of stuff that goes on which nobody hears about. No form of gambling is ever 100% on the up and up.

When I see insiders make claims such as this, I tend to believe them.

http://murderpedia.org/ma...atthew.htm

"He claimed the Connecticut Lottery Corp. exaggerated potential winnings to spur ticket sales, and that store clerks were taking winning scratch tickets for themselves by cracking the computer system."

It is also advisable to sign your lotto tickets, not the scratch offs, but the lottery tickets where you choose the numbers. I have heard several stories about people taking their winning tickets to the store and having the clerks check to see if they are winners. I remember one story where a man had bought a million dollar ticket and presented it to the clerk to check the number, not knowing he actually had a winning ticket. The clerk told the man the ticket was not a winner. The customer let the clerk keep the ticket to dispose of it. A few weeks later, the clerk's mother presented a million dollar winning lottery ticket to the lottery board. Somehow it was proved that the clerk had stolen the winning ticket from that customer. If the customer had signed the ticket before presenting it to the clerk, there would have been no way the clerk could have kept it.

I won $1000 years ago in the DC Lottery. I would save up all my tickets and then check the numbers published in the newspaper. I knew I had a winning ticket, but I thought it was only for $100, so when I presented it to the store clerk, he told me, "Oh! You have to take this to the lottery board because anything over $100 has to be cashed there." Fortunately, I had an honest clerk. Now they have those machines where you can check your own tickets without handing them over to unscrupulous clerks/cashiers. That put an end to thieving clerks.

They have done stings and caught lotto vendors lieing about winning tickets. I know some one who sells the scratch off tickets. Each roll or bunch is gaurantee to have so many high value winners, so if they go through half of the tickets or more and no one has won them. They can better their odds of winning.