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A Glitch Stole Christmas: S.C. Lottery Says Error Caused Winning Tickets (npr.org)
An anonymous reader shares a report: The South Carolina lottery game is called Holiday Cash Add-A-Play, and the rules are pretty simple: Get three Christmas tree symbols in any vertical, horizontal or diagonal line, and you win a prize. Monday was Christmas, and some folks in the Palmetto State were feeling jolly. "I don't play the lottery that much," Nicole Coggins of Liberty, S.C., told local NBC affiliate WYFF. "Every once in a while, I'll buy a Powerball ticket, but something told me to buy a lottery ticket." She paid an extra dollar to add a play. The ticket was a winner, and she was excited.
The station says that as word got out about the sudden proliferation of winning tickets, a frenzy ensued. One store manager told WYFF that "it was crazy" as people hurried to buy the tickets. But the Christmas miracle was too good to be true. The South Carolina Education Lottery says a programming error in its computer system vendor is to blame for so many winning tickets. "From 5:51 p.m. to 7:53 p.m., the same play symbol was repeated in all nine available play areas on tickets which would result in a top prize of $500," the lottery said in a statement Wednesday. "No more than five identical play symbols should appear for a single play. As soon as the issue was identified, the Add-A-Play game was suspended immediately to conduct a thorough investigation."
The station says that as word got out about the sudden proliferation of winning tickets, a frenzy ensued. One store manager told WYFF that "it was crazy" as people hurried to buy the tickets. But the Christmas miracle was too good to be true. The South Carolina Education Lottery says a programming error in its computer system vendor is to blame for so many winning tickets. "From 5:51 p.m. to 7:53 p.m., the same play symbol was repeated in all nine available play areas on tickets which would result in a top prize of $500," the lottery said in a statement Wednesday. "No more than five identical play symbols should appear for a single play. As soon as the issue was identified, the Add-A-Play game was suspended immediately to conduct a thorough investigation."
The state should honor the tickets and not welch. If it was caused by an error, then the state should sue the manufacturer of the tickets for damages.
IMO, the tickets should be paid, at least the first ticket per person. I think that's the only ethical course of action.
For people who found it was a glitch and repeatedly bought tickets, I can see some argument for only paying the first.
But what will likely happen is some lawyer will cite some obscure contract language and nobody will get anything. I hope I'm wrong.
-=Lothsahn=-
I just can't believe they dare to call themselves "Education Lottery". Any good education would tell you that lotteries is a bad idea.
If the glitch resulted in only losers everywhere nobody would ever know and the South Carolina lottery would gladly keep the money.
They should pay all the winners. All of them.
"Fuckers will take, but they don't wanna give it back."
...tails you lose
If we allow our wealthiest and most powerful citizens to be opportunistic scum whenever they feel like it, we should offer the same option to our least-privileged citizens as well.
No criminal charges and full payouts for all tickets purchased.
Either that, or we need to talk about reworking the rules for everybody.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
I hope they aren't caught.
some people fall for the hot slots myth.
This like that wow this game is paying out big time it's very hot so I will keep playing till it cools off.
Pretty much all lottery have an user agreement that if there is an error, they are not forced to honour anything whatsoever.
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Looks like He answered YES to all prayers in his computer again.
I must have put a decimal point in the wrong place or something.
This is the kind of error that should never ever occur. But the world of computer programming has remained stuck in an amateur mentality for the past 40 years, which is beyond sad.
The US had *NO* credit left after the revolutionary war. Combined with the lack of a central currency as a result of the Articles of Confederation and rapid defense of States Rights, the merchants couldn't get any line of credit to receive merchandise from Europe, and ended up calling in all the loans and accrued interest that Revolutionary veterans, most of whom were subsistence farmers, were not in a position to pay, having spent years fighting the war with their farms lying fallow, and having returned to a depressed economy from which they couldn't make any money. This lead to many of them being placed in debtor's prison, which is where Shay's Rebellion came from, as well as the later Whiskey Rebellion when George Washington marched on the unruly tax protesters, losing more conscripted people due to said march than in actual conflict with the rebels, who had mostly dispersed before they ever got near them, and had only numbered in the few hundred anyways (Washington took like 3000+ conscripts to deal with them.)
" 'And it was another winner and another winner. So I thought, "Well, maybe there is something wrong with their machine. This can't be real." '
She suspected something was wrong, yet she kept buying tickets - seems like a clear example of exploiting a malfunction in the lottery.
Ken
-- which is a pretty safe assumption if the lawyers drawing up contest rules were competent -- how to deal with the PR fallout?
If it were me I'd do what lotteries are set up to do: make people regard a worthless piece of paper as valuable.
The SC lottery transfer about $400 million annually to the state. 5% of that -- the usual accounting benchmark for a "not materially significant" fraction -- would amount to $20 million. $20 million is a lot of money to a lottery player.
So I'd take $20 million and set up a lottery for people who are holding worthless winning tickets. They'd still be worthless, but they wouldn't seem worthless. To make the game exciting I'd have a big jackpot -- say $5 million -- but lots and lots of small prizes too.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I bet if the "printing or programming error" resulted in winning tickets to be non-winning tickets, you wouldn't be seeing any surprise payouts.
SC lottery officials are on the next flight to Mumbai.
"Something told me...." this is how gambling addictions start. People honestly start believing they have the voice of god or something in their head and that if they undergo certain rituals it will purify their mind to receive the divine word that will lead them to more money.
This is one of those critical points by which you can judge society. People say shit like this all the time. "Something told me to do some crazy artificial thing." That's a red, red flag. If some one is talking like that they have lost their grip on reality. They don't know why they do what they do or believe what they believe. Their minds are broken. This society has broken them and they are desperate wandering fragments of human beings clinging to random artificial symbols to guide their actions. No consciousness of self, no rationale for action, no free will. Just conditioned behavior.
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While I agree that they should have paid from an ethical standpoint, anyone who's ever been in a casino knows "Malfunction voids all pays or plays".
Is a programming error a malfunction? No. But do you really think the casinos are going to lose? Or, worse yet, in state lotteries, THE STATE?
Be fully justified in your pissed-offedness, but that doesn't mean you'll get anywhere.