South Carolina May Stiff Lottery Winners After Massive Printing ErrorFor Two Hours, It Was Impossible To Lose On Scratch-Off |
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Lottery players in South Carolina thinking they won some extra holiday cheer might be left empty-handed thanks to a so-called computer glitch with the scratch-off tickets.
According to reports, the South Carolina Education Lottery said Tuesday that a Christmas-themed scratch-off ticket was faulty and could cost the lottery nearly double what it had intended to pay out in prizes.
For a couple of hours on Christmas Day, players of the Holiday Cash Add-A-Play game kept winning thanks to the ticket goof, Wltx.com reported. The game, which cost $1 to play, required players to line up three trees in a tic-tac-toe grid in order to win $500. It turned out that tickets were printed with all nine spots containing the trees, which means that it was impossible to lose. The game was quickly pulled after lottery officials caught wind of what was happening.
Still, nearly $34 million worth of winnings were made during the short time frame. The game was set to award about $19 million in prizes altogether. Fox46charlotte.com reported that one man noticed he kept on winning and so he bought tickets with total winnings amounting to $29,000.
The lottery is planning a full review of the incident to determine if all the winnings will or can be honored under state rules. The game was run on behalf of the South Carolina Lottery by a company called Intralot. The state reportedly is reconsidering its contract with the firm.
Lottery officials did say that the incident was the result of a “programming” error.
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