OKLAHOMA CITY — The Oklahoma Lottery Commission wants to get a law changed to assist it with investigations.
The agency wants to change a law that bans all of its employees from purchasing tickets, said Rollo Redburn, Oklahoma Lottery Commission executive director.
"It would be somebody in our security department who could purchase a ticket in the confines of an investigation," said Jay Finks, Oklahoma Lottery Commission director of marketing and administration.
Currently, the agency sends out investigators to ensure retailers are handling the tickets appropriately, Redburn said.
An Oklahoma City clerk was recently fired after pocketing a consumer's winning ticket, Redburn said. The action, while rare, was uncovered following a Lottery Commission investigation, Redburn said.
"We may go out and do 10 or 12 spot investigations and everybody does what they are supposed to do usually," Redburn said. "As in this one case, one made a bad decision and decided he would try to keep that winning ticket."
The agency currently has three employees in its security department, Redburn said. The agency also works with local law enforcement, Redburn said.
"You are limited in what you can go do if you can't buy a ticket," Finks said. "You are not getting the experience customers might get."
"That makes sense if somebody is out there doing something wrong," said Mike Thornbrugh, QuikTrip manager of public and government affairs.
Thornbrugh said his company has never had any instances where a clerk kept a winning ticket. "We are fortunate," he said. "We have never had any issues."
Both Redburn and Finks said if the law were changed to allow security personnel to purchase tickets, the employee would not be allowed to keep the proceeds should the ticket be a winner.
Redburn said the agency's biggest complaint about retailers from consumers is that the consumer was paid incorrectly.
"The nice thing about our system is we have the ability to go out and see what happened if they can remember where and when," he said.
Normally, the complaint turns out to be invalid, Redburn said.
Not a good idea, but it can be a test case for other lottery agencies.
Im thinking the same....let one of them win a jackpot everybody will be like ooooohhhh it's fixed, it's fixed...might lose a little public confidence there
I don't like it either, if they want to play the lottery they can go to Texas, Kansas, Arkansas or Missouri.
Oooh, the clerk was fired for stealing! That'll show them!
Other states check by printing fake tickets, and putting the bar code into their system as a winner. That way the clerk thinks it's a real ticket and makes the decision to steal or be honest based on that. The store is reimbursed for the fake payout by the lottery in the same way they're reimbursed for real winning tickets, without even knowing it was fake, and the regular games and players are not affected.
Lottery employees should not be purchasing lottery tickets, exclamation point!
Keep the ban in place.
maybe give them a chance
Why do all employees have to be allowed to buy if it's just so 3 investigators can catch crooks?
This doesn't pass the smell test.
Way too much opportunity for corruption.
It would be best if no employees were allowed to buy, ever.
I can't understand why these people are prohibited from purchase a lottery ticket.So they good enough to investigate corruption in retailers who may or may not be screwing the public but if they buy a lottery ticket they become less of an honest person? Does purchasing a lottery ticket throws trust out the window?
OK, well this is interesting, so this means we can't really rely on the "fact that a store is lucky"
b/c we don't know if it was used as a checkpoint for fake tickets !
They should be allowed to play, but not at the store they work at.
The store that sells the ticket is the one who gets credit for big winners. At least I've never seen a banner that said "a large winner was cashed here". These weren't sold at any store, and no store gets the credit for cashing them.
There must be a good why lottery employees are ban from purchasing lottery tickets. One is that if an employee win public might lose their confidence in lottery. However if they want to give it a shot they might as well try.