'Zero' chance lottery tickets stun some players

Hoover, a business professor at Washington and Lee University in Virginia, wasn't surprised when his tickets didn't bring him the $75,000 grand prize, but he was shocked to learn the top prize had been awarded before he bought the ticket.

"I felt duped into buying these things," Hoover said.

He discovered the Virginia State Lottery was continuing to sell tickets for games in which the top prizes were no longer available. Public records showed that someone had already won the top prize one month before Hoover played. He is now suing the state of Virginia for breach of contract.

Even more disturbing than the state of Virginia selling tickets after the prize had been claimed is the report that "half of the 42 states that have lotteries were, as of early July, continuing to sell tickets after the top prizes are claimed."

www.cnn.com...

Edit to add link...




[edit on 7/8/2008 by Unit541]

Well isn't that just great?
The whole lottery systems basically a trick anyway though so I wouldn't be suprised.

This doesn't really shock me. I operate under the assumption that all lotteries are rigged. I wouldn't be surprised if the "winners" were all pre-selected.

I don't see the issue here...but then again I don't play the lottery so I'm an outsider looking in. The whole point of the scratch off games is that the government prints x amount of ticket that are priced at $y each and they give away prizes that are worth less than x*y so that there is profit. What if the first ticket purchaed is the million dollar ticket...should they pull all of the rest of the tickets and start over, taking a loss in the process?

reply to post by BlueTriangle


Agreed. There are still other prizes out there. Take a $5 ticket, the top prize is $50,000

But there are still and look to the right the amount of people that COULD win those other prizes. If I didn't win $50,000, I would still like to win $2,000 on a $5 ticket.

$50,000 10 ---
$2,000 222 ---
$200 2,162 ---
$100 3,505 ---
$50 69,178 ---
$25 69,178 ---
$20 86,489 ---
$15 69,184 ---
$10 518,817 ---
$5 553,376 ---

I think the issue at hand is that people select which scratch off they want to spend their money on based on the grand prize. In this case it's the ""$75,000 Grand Prize" printed on the ticket that actually does the sales job. Would you buy a raffle ticket if you knew the prize had already been given away?

I can see both sides here, it's just a flaw in the system. However, once the grand prize is no longer available, it's most assuredly false advertising to continue to sell tickets claiming $75k as the grand prize.

I frankly don't see how this CAN'T be a breach of contract.
It's like somebody sells you a placebo instead of a much needed medicine because they ran out. Scam.

reply to post by buddhasystem

Exactly. People buy the $75k ticket for a chance at $75k. Sure they'd be happy to win $20, but they're paying for a chance at $75k, not whatever consolation prize is left.

The fact is that the ticket claims a grand prize that there is no chance of winning. For the same reason the lotto or powerball prizes have to be reset, something needs to be done about these scratch offs.

The article claims the Virginia State Lottery sold $85 million in tickets for which no top prize was available. Can anyone honestly say that figure would not have been lower if it were disclosed that the "top prizes" were no longer available? I'd say nowhere near that many tickets would have been sold.

Perhaps it should now be verified that the "top prize" winners are real people, who actually received the funds, and not "vapor citizens" conjured up by the state to avoid the possibility of someone hitting the jackpot.