3 Million Lottery Tickets Being Audited After 310 Complaints on Mailings

California Lottery officials have launched an unprecedented audit of 3 million “scratch-off” tickets received in the mail in order to verify complaints from 310 players who swear they sent “Big Spin” instant winner stubs to the wrong address.

Instead of mailing their tickets to an address provided for “Big Spin” instant winners, the 310 who complained said they inadvertently sent them to an address intended for a drawing for a chance at the spin, lottery officials said.

What may have confused some players was that the draw address was the only one included in information brochures supplied to lottery ticket vendors across the state, said Joanne McNabb, communications manager for the California State Lottery.

All Will Be Checked

Lottery officials are examining all letters mailed to the draw address in search of misdirected winning spin tickets.

Lottery officials said they were skeptical of most of the 310 complaints they received from players who said they held tickets allowing them an instant opportunity at the “Big Spin” where large cash prizes are awarded. They said that only an estimated 42 such tickets were printed out of a total 125 million tickets sold for that particular scratch-off game, called “Grand Slam.”

But California Lottery Director Chon Gutierrez said that the audit was initiated to “make sure that none of our players lose because of this situation.”

“We have no reason to believe these people are anything but sincere,” Gutierrez said, “so I have asked that we start the process of opening all the envelopes we have received, which is in the vicinity of 3.1 million.”

In the instant games, purchasers scratch off an opaque film covering symbols printed on each ticket to see if there are any winning combinations of the symbols. Purchasers of an instant winner spin ticket are directed to mail their stub to a state lottery facility in Sacramento for validation.

In this case, the job of opening all those envelopes has gone to 20 college students on summer break who may not complete the task in two months, Gutierrez said.

So far, the students have found only four of the 310 disputed tickets. None of them were instant winners.

Meanwhile, 40 of the estimated 42 winning spin tickets issued have been validated.

“I’m sure I won,” said a player from Los Angeles who asked that her name not be used. “Is it possible that an error caused more than 42 instant winners to be printed?”

“There is no question of a printing error here,” McNabb said. However, scratch-off games use special machinery computer-programmed to randomly distribute a carefully restricted number of winning spin tickets, she said.

“Forty two is a very good estimate of how many winning spin tickets would appear in the 124.5 million Grand Slam tickets we sold,” McNabb said.

“However, we are dealing with statistical probability here,” McNabb added. “If we find more than 42, we will validate those tickets and they’ll be treated as any other.”