Commission votes in the same meeting to deny $500 payout to another player
By Kate Northrop
Within the same meeting, the Hoosier Lottery Commission voted to approve a $50,000 prize claim to a winner whose ticket was ripped up and to deny a $500 prize to another scratch-off winner who posted their winning ticket online.
The Hoosier Lottery Commission was faced with two rather interesting cases regarding the validity of two very different prize claims and ultimately voted to approve one and deny the other.
In a meeting that took place in Indianapolis on Tuesday, Lottery commissioners discussed Paul Marshall and his winning $50,000 Powerball ticket. The catch was that he stepped forward to claim the prize, but his ticket was in pieces.
Marshall visited the retailer he bought the ticket at to validate it, however retailers cannot pay out tickets that win more than $600. Therefore, when they checked his ticket, the lottery terminal printed out a slip with written instructions to visit a prize payment office.
The retailer staff ripped up the winning ticket out of habit, Lottery officials said in the meeting.
Marshall did make his way to a claim center and presented Lottery officials with the written instructions, but the Lottery couldn't pay out a prize without seeing the ticket.
Thankfully for him, all five commissioners unanimously voted to approve the payout.
"This was a fortunate event, where we were able to... reconstruct what happened," Lotter Director of Legal Affairs and Compliance Chuck Taylor said at the meeting.
Lottery staff "immediately" visited the retailer in question and Lottery security was "on it," he said. Video surveillance footage confirmed Marshall's story.
While Marshall was doubly lucky, the same cannot be said for another lottery winner, whose case was unanimously denied in the same meeting.
Drena Harris won $500 on a scratch-off ticket and posted a photo of the ticket to her Facebook account. While it might have felt good to publicly celebrate online, the feeling didn't last long. One of her followers had taken the image and conned a retailer into cashing out the prize before she could bring it in to make the claim herself.
The Lottery declined to pay out the prize twice, Taylor said. Harris tried to appeal the decision to an administrative law judge, but the judge ruled in favor of the Lottery. Plus, the retailer that had paid out the prize had gone out of business by the time Harris brought her case into light.
"Ordinarily, if she would have acted quickly and came in soon after, we could have possibly [obtained evidence], but the retailer where it was cashed... had not been a retailer for two months," Taylor explained.
In other words, there was no way to review video surveillance footage and no way to interview employees.
"It's not a decision that we enjoy, but... we can't pay something twice," Taylor continued.
Technically, the retailer who paid out the prize was at fault too — lottery retailers are prohibited from paying out prizes without being presented a physical winning ticket.
Since the business was closed, there was nothing the Lottery could do, but had it been open, the Lottery "probably" could have gotten the money back and paid Harris her prize.
Lottery winners should not post photos of their winning tickets online on any social media platforms to avoid being scammed. Instead, players should put tickets in a safe place and to treat them as you would checks, cash, and other items of high value.
OUCH !! DENIED $500 !! 'cause she had to get silly on facebook first ROFL
Another reason for a person not to broadcast their entire life on Facebook or other social media.Sometimes it's just best to keep things to yourself.
Aren't their lp members that post their winning tickets? Always thought that was very poor judgment.
Not necessarily. Those tickets may well have been already cashed.
Or, it is easy to just black out the ticket's code in the photo, which would make it impossible to redeem using just the photo.
This is exactly correct. Just redact the bar code or take a picture before you scratch off the bar code and you are ok. This problem is not limited to lotto tickets. People have posted sporting or concert tickets online with exposed bar codes and been ripped off. Just be careful if you post online.
It does not just apply to winning tickets, I use to watch a guy scratch off tickets on You Tube and people would capture the losing ticket bar code and enter them in the second chance drawings.
Great point.
I recommend covering up QR codes, bar codes, and number codes that are on lotto receipts, including scratcher cards, before posting a photo or video or the lotto receipt online.
Sometimes a thumbnail of the photo is encoded in the file, so post editing the photo to hide these identifiers still might not be good enough, because the info is still encoded in the thumbnail info. Best to cover up the codes on the receipt before taking a photo, if you are going to post it online.
Keep in mind that blurring something in a video is not good enough obfuscation. Reasoning being is that de-blurring can be formulated as a partial-inverse problem, which can be solved with linear matrix solvers (if the blurring is linear). Totally opaque hiding with a solid color will hide the info.
And don't forget a thief/forger also needs a picture of the back of the ticket too. How can anyone claim a ticket if the reverse side of it is totally blank? It's obvious that it's phony.
I'd also add that in Florida once a winning ticket has been run through the lottery terminal to be cashed, the terminal prints on the front of the ticket the words "WINNING TICKET". A picture of an entire winning ticket (including the barcode) with those words printed on it can be posted online worry free because it's already been cashed. G5
I've never seen a retailer print on a winning ticket before that would be an expensive printer and time consuming. The Bar Code on the back is for Lottery and Retailer use only not for the consumer, so you could have a picture on your phone and scan it and the cashier would be apart of the theft. Black out works but it's too messy just cover with a thumb or fold the bar code out of view.
Time consuming? Not hardly. It's very obvious to me that you've never cashed in or even seen a winning ticket in Florida.
The clerk drops the ticket into the slot at the top of the lottery terminal, the terminal takes about a second to read it to verify it's a winner, and about a second later the ticket pops out of the bottom of the terminal with "WINNING TICKET" printed on the front of it.
And the bar code is located at the bottom of the front side of every type of lottery ticket sold in Florida. G5
Read the article that we are commenting about and notice that your comment is not related because the older folks in Florida has not joined the Social Media age of stealing Lottery tickets just yet.
The lottery officials that paid the guy who won 50K on a torn up lottery ticket. Why was the receipt of his winning ticket the only proof he need to get his money. Why did the clerk not give the guy the torn up pieces of lottery ticket so he could also take that in lottery officials as proof?
The article clearly states,
"In a meeting that took place in Indianapolis on Tuesday, Lottery commissioners discussed Paul Marshall and his winning $50,000 Powerball ticket. The catch was that he stepped forward to claim the prize, but his ticket was in pieces."