Lottery Payouts Halted : Computer Glitch Hits Lotto, Decco
California Lottery officials said today they are temporarily unable to pay out lotto and Decco prizes for the first time in the four-year history of the state-run operation because of a computer problem.
The failure halted payout of more than $7.5 million in prizes from Wednesday night’s lotto and Decco drawings alone, as well as awarding of prizes from any previous drawings. A jackpot of $4.6 million awaits the player or players, if any, who picked the six numbers to win Wednesday night’s Lotto 6/49 drawing.
Lottery computer manager Joanne Ichimura-Hoffmann said prize payouts would resume as soon as the problem was resolved.
“It’s some kind of technical problem” with the central computer that logs bets from retail terminals throughout the state for the twice-weekly Lotto 6-49 and daily Decco drawings, said lottery spokeswoman Joanne McNabb.
Lottery officials would not disclose unofficial results showing winner totals and whether any players won the $4.6 million lotto jackpot, but urged all winners to keep their tickets.
Ichimura-Hoffmann said the problem which delayed validation of game results stemmed from the garbling of a small number of Northern California transactions by a central computer in Sacramento. She said the computer, one of the primary units that logs lotto and Decco bets from retail terminals, failed to properly record an estimated 29 transactions, bets, cancellation of bets or prize payouts.
The computer, operated for the lottery by GTECH Corp., apparently garbled the transactions on a storage disk and possibly on a storage tape.
The lottery was therefore unable to fully compile the results of the drawings, which would have made them official so that awarding of prizes could begin.
Ichimura-Hoffmann said computer operators were retrieving the missing data from a backup computer’s memory so they could compile the drawing results.
John Schade, assistant director of public affairs for the California State Lottery, said officials hope that the problem will be corrected by the end of the day and that ticket cashing can resume Friday.
The validation process is essentially a second check to verify the original computer assessment of how many winners there were and how much they won in the games. It is required by the voter-approved lottery’s own rules to complete a drawing and award prizes.
The winning Lotto numbers Wednesday were 37, 24, 39, 36, 1, 21, with a bonus number of 13. Winning Decco cards were the ace of hearts, the 10 of clubs, the 7 of diamonds and the 2 of spades.
