Lottery Glitch Fixed; Winners’ Checks on Way

One month after a major computer failure forced Controller Gray Davis to stop paying big lottery winners, state officials are preparing today to put checks in the mail to dozens of lucky--if not impatient--gamblers.

A spokesman for Davis said the computer errors have been corrected “to our satisfaction,” and his office has informed lottery officials that it was ready to start honoring prize claims.

The backlog of unpaid tickets includes those held by the Dec. 5 winners of a $30-million Super Lotto jackpot. Big jackpot winners usually receive the first installment of their payoffs a few days after they formally submit claims for the prize.

Unlike the lesser prizes, Super Lotto jackpots are paid over a 20-year period. The two sets of winners of the $30-million jackpot, for example, each will get annual payments of $772,000 (before taxes) for the next 20 years.

Officials estimate that about 145 winning tickets a week for four weeks were affected by the controller’s decision. Davis decided to suspend payment of winning tickets for prizes of $600 or more after a series of programming errors prevented his computers from getting access to all the wagering data stored on the lottery’s computer tapes.

It was the first time the California lottery had to suspend payment of winning tickets for any significant period.

Lottery communications director Joanne McNabb said the programming errors were created by the Nov. 16 introduction of keno and occurred primarily in the first week of the game’s operation. She said keno, a fast-action game that is played every five minutes, was more complex than the lottery’s other computer games and required an elaborate program that turned out to have several glitches.

Although the errors showed up only in the keno program, she said the controller decided to withhold winnings on all tickets until the breakdown was corrected. The controller, who audits lottery operations, pays all winning tickets of $600 or more. Most lesser prizes are paid immediately by the retailer who sells the tickets and were not affected by the computer problems.

Officials in the controller’s office said the suspension of payments means that most winners will get their checks two or three weeks later than usual. Other than the big jackpot payoffs, lottery prizes are normally paid within two weeks, although winners are told to expect as much as a six-week delay. McNabb said few winners have to wait longer than six weeks.

McNabb said the lottery is investigating what caused the programming errors and whether damages should be assessed against GTECH, the multinational company that operates and maintains the lottery’s computer system.