Connecticut Lottery forced to redraw special New Year's raffle after 'human error'

Jan 2, 2018, 9:12 am (19 comments)

Connecticut Lottery

Error made 100,000 raffle tickets unable to win

Players of a special New Year's lottery raffle game in Connecticut may be out of luck if they tossed their tickets, after officials disclosed they need to hold a new drawing after 100,000 eligible tickets were mistakenly disregarded Monday.

The Connecticut Lottery said there was a problem with the drawing due to "human error," and a second drawing will be announced later this week. Winning tickets from both drawings will be honored, according to lottery officials.

"Due to human error, 100,000 ticket numbers were not included in this morning's Super Draw drawing," Interim CT Lottery President and CEO Chelsea Turner said in a statement. "Our goal, first and foremost, is to make our players whole. In order to do so, a second drawing will take place shortly that includes the corrected ticket number range."

The New Year's $1,000,000 Super Draw sold 275,000 tickets with unique six-digit codes ranging from 100,001 to 375,000. The lottery said a mistake in the range of the drawing meant some tickets were given no chance of winning prizes that ranged from $100 to $1 million.

The lottery initially temporarily suspended the cashing of tickers from the initial drawing while they arranged an additional one, but later said winning tickets from both drawings would be honored.

The original raffle winning numbers are posted on Lottery Post's Connecticut Lottery Results page.  Lottery Post is the only major independent lottery website to publish winning numbers for raffle drawings held across the US every year.

Lydia Monserrate, who said she looks forward to playing the lottery in general to "make a little extra money," thought the game cost too much at $10 a ticket and didn't like that she couldn't pick her own numbers.

"I'm glad I didn't play," she said.

Other lottery players who did play may have lost their chance to win after tossing their tickets after discovering they weren't winners from the first drawing.

"I go to the automatic reader and if it says not a winner, there's a trash receptacle there and I drop it in," Richard Logozzo told the Hartford Courant. He said he tossed his tickets Monday after seeing they weren't winners.

"I think they should run a whole new game and allow us to buy tickets for a whole new game," he told the newspaper.

The Department of Consumer Protection, which oversees gambling in the state, said it's "reviewing the policies and procedures put in place" for the botched drawing.

"Our Gaming Division will be reviewing the policies and procedures put in place for this drawing, and will place heightened scrutiny on procedures for future drawings in order to ensure they are conducted appropriately," Commissioner Michelle H. Seagull said in a statement. "We encourage consumers to hold on to tickets they purchased for today's drawing as winning numbers from two drawings will be honored by the Connecticut Lottery."

Lora Rae Anderson, a spokeswoman for the Department of Consumer Protection, said the failure to include all the tickets in the drawing meant some people who purchased tickets had no chance of winning.

"They take the number of tickets that were [sold], and they enter a range into a random number generator, and they didn't make the range big enough and accidentally did not include 100,000 ticket numbers so those 100,000 tickets had no chance of winning," Anderson said.

The Department of Consumer Protection reviews policies and procedures for every lottery game and will take a closer look at the Super Draw game, she said.

Turner said the Department of Consumer Protection and an outside auditor, Marcum LLC, oversee games to help avoid errors. "However, there is a human element that is not always perfect," she said. "There will be an internal investigation that carefully reviews whether the proper protocols were followed and if not, appropriate action will be taken."

The lottery has been operating without a permanent leader since former president and CEO Anne Noble stepped down during a Department of Consumer Protection investigation into the fraud-plagued 5 Card Cash game, in which lottery retailers were manipulating machines to produce more winning tickets. Several vendors and their employees were arrested as a result of the investigation.

Four finalists are being considered for the CEO position, which pays $177,000 to $283,000 a year. State Senate Republican Leader Len Fasano, a critic of the lottery in the past, said last month that the lottery needs to hire an "innovative individual" with strong "organizational and administrative abilities" to enable the lottery to "dust itself off" and "rebuild the trust" of the public and legislature.

The CT Lottery raises $330 million a year in revenue for the state on $1.2 billion in ticket sales.

News story photo(Click to display full-size in gallery)

Lottery Post Staff

Comments

rcbbuckeye's avatarrcbbuckeye

Wow. South Carolina, and now Connecticut.

noise-gate

Sure glad that the so called " human error" BSis happening East of the Rockies! Let them do their test runs to clear up that mess. The rest of the country will be grateful, knowing that they ran the gauntlet in making sure this doesn't happen to other lotteries across the nation. The players back there would agree, that the State lottery needs to do More than simply  " dust itself off." 

Bleudog101

Am I really reading all these lottery screw-ups correctly?  It is the 21st Century and all these 'mistakes' make me think a third world country in the control booth.

beret32

This is one reason I hold all of my tickets for quite a while.

But they really should be able to do this without screwing up.

Raven62's avatarRaven62

WOW! That's a lot of Tickets to Exclude from the Drawing!

noise-gate

Quote: Originally posted by Raven62 on Jan 2, 2018

WOW! That's a lot of Tickets to Exclude from the Drawing!

Right. I wonder what happened to that " error of a human?" Was he or she canned? After all, players lost their money, which at this point, is irretrievable!

KY Floyd's avatarKY Floyd

Quote: Originally posted by Raven62 on Jan 2, 2018

WOW! That's a lot of Tickets to Exclude from the Drawing!

That's an awfully round number of tickets to exclude.

I wonder if somebody just fat-fingered the keyboard and had the computer select winning tickets between 200,001 to 375,000  or 100,001 to 275,000 instead of the correct 100,001 to 375,000 range that the tickets were assigned. The second one seems especially plausible if the person entering the numbers knew they had sold 275,000 tickets.

While that would be a simple and logical explanation, the really troubling part is how they'd fail to catch the mistake before certifying and announcing the results. First, you'd think at least two people would check things at least twice before having the computer select the numbers. Then you'd think they'd look at the winning tickets to see that they look like a reasonably random selection. If they did exclude the 100,000 tickets at one end of the range the warning bells should have really been ringing when there wasn't a single winning ticket from the first or last 36% of the range.

 

"I'm glad I didn't play,"

Yeah, it would be a real bummer to have bought a ticket and then had a 64% chance of getting two chances to win instead of one.

noise-gate

Quote: Originally posted by beret32 on Jan 2, 2018

This is one reason I hold all of my tickets for quite a while.

But they really should be able to do this without screwing up.

For entertain purposes only :

" Hold all of my tickets for quite a while" - well given that you joined in November, that" quite a while" is a lil over a month's worth..right?Big Smile

TheGameGrl's avatarTheGameGrl

The lottery is working towards a fair resolution . They accept accountability. 

 

Only downside is the one player suggesting they be allowed to re buy entirely new tickets. Have they forgotten the lottery collected during the first glitch? Thereby a whole new buy in would mean double the collected funds? Not sure the player thought that idea thru.

noise-gate

Do you work for the Connecticut lottery?

Lotologist

Anybody who throws their losing lottery tickets away probably shouldn't play the lottery. I always save my losing tickets and crunch numbers during the New Year for personal knowledge and tax write-off.

ckrakowski

"Players of a special New Year's lottery raffle game in Connecticut may be out of luck if they tossed their tickets, after officials disclosed they need to hold a new drawing after 100,000 eligible tickets were mistakenly disregarded Monday."

 

My guess is they are about to be sued by wronged players. They might want to set aside some money for the lawsuits.

 

"Our goal, first and foremost, is to make our players whole."

 

How do you plan to do that when you said that people who might have tossed their tickets are out of luck.

 

Why are people who kept their tickets more deserving to be made whole then people who may have gotten rid of theirs.

 

"Other lottery players who did play may have lost their chance to win after tossing their tickets after discovering they weren't winners from the first drawing."

 

But they said they were going to make everyone whole. Well I guess they lied.

 

"I go to the automatic reader and if it says not a winner, there's a trash receptacle there and I drop it in," Richard Logozzo told the Hartford Courant. He said he tossed his tickets Monday after seeing they weren't winners."

 

So since he played will he be made whole. Oh wait I forgot he threw out his tickets due to a ct lottery <snip> up.

 

 

What is with all these lotteries screwing up all at once.

 

 

 

 

 

This post has been automatically changed by the Lottery Post computer system to remove inappropriate content and/or spam.

grwurston's avatargrwurston

Quote: Originally posted by noise-gate on Jan 2, 2018

For entertain purposes only :

" Hold all of my tickets for quite a while" - well given that you joined in November, that" quite a while" is a lil over a month's worth..right?Big Smile

Just because they only joined LP in November, doesn't mean they haven't been playing for years or even decades.  Yes Nod

noise-gate

Quote: Originally posted by grwurston on Jan 2, 2018

Just because they only joined LP in November, doesn't mean they haven't been playing for years or even decades.  Yes Nod

....and here l was,all this time, under the illusion that you picked up things pretty quick, that you were a savvy guy G. In case you missed it, l started with " for entertainment purposes only." Big Smile 

Better check your shoes G.

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