News writer; Opinion columnist
Louisiana Lottery officials recently announced that they had accidentally placed coal in the stockings of some state lottery players by printing a batch of Lotto and Easy 5 tickets with the incorrect draw date.
The wrong date is Wednesday, December 25, but there will be no drawing on this date because Louisiana Lottery's official policy states that no drawings should occur on Christmas Day. However, misprinted tickets are still eligible to participate in the lottery. Any ticket printed with a December 25 draw date will be included in the next scheduled drawing after Christmas, Saturday, December 28.
Additionally, if you have a multi-draw ticket that includes December 25, your ticket will be entered into an additional drawing following the date range printed on your ticket. Players with multi-draw tickets who are unsure if the December 25 drawing is included in their game should compare if the number of drawings on their tickets corresponds to the number of drawings that will occur in their selected date range.
Lottery officials stated that the misprinted tickets were created after 9:30 p.m. on Saturday, December 21, and continued through noon on Sunday, December 22. Players who purchased their tickets during that window should immediately double-check the dates on their tickets because Santa will not be placing any jackpots under their tree on Christmas this year.
Sorry, wrong number
This isn't the first time that a state lottery has misprinted tickets, and sometimes, these mistakes have led to heartbreak for those affected.
In 2015, John Wines of Roswell, New Mexico, purchased a scratch-off ticket from a gas station. As he uncovered the numbers, he revealed a combination totaling a $500,000 jackpot. However, there was just one problem: the game's maximum prize was $250,000.
When Wines had the ticket scanned and tried to collect his prize, he was told it was a misprint and wouldn't be paid out. He appealed to the state lottery office, but officials there confirmed that because the ticket was misprinted with the wrong numbers, it was considered void, and no prize would be paid out.
Instead, he was offered an apology and $100 worth of state lottery tickets.
Wines told reporters that he had just retired and thought he should have been allowed to collect at least part of his alleged prize. "I mean, if you thought you won $500,000 and somebody tells you that you didn't, and you can prove to them you did, it's pretty stressful for somebody to say, 'No, you're not getting your money,”.
Fool's gold
Anna Maria Curico of Florida experienced a similar misfortune with a misprinted lottery ticket. In her case, her late husband had purchased a $20 Gold Rush instant-win ticket in 2007. Gold Rush is a number-match game, and Curico claimed that she had uncovered a “1,” which, based on the corresponding match, should have made the ticket worth $500,000.
However, state lottery officials countered that misprinted letters under the number indicated that the one was actually a 13, which meant that the ticket was worth nothing. Curico responded by suing the Florida State Lottery for her prize, and she took her case all the way to the state appeals court.
In a final ruling by a three-judge panel on the court, the justices said that Curico was not eligible for the prize, stating in their verdict that the error was “caused by an ink jet malfunction in the machine that printed the ticket." Ultimately, after several years of litigation, she collected nothing.
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