New Mexico Man Won’t Get $500,000 Winnings From Scratch-Off Ticket
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A New Mexico man thought he struck it big, winning $500,000 off a scratch-off instant lottery ticket that he purchased for $20. He was wrong!
According to a lottery official, the matches were because of a printing failure. Linda Hamlin, a spokeswoman from the state’s lottery commission, said John Wines purchased the $20 ticket from a Roswell gas station in December. It was learned the machine he purchase from was defective.
Wines believed he won $500,000 but after the scan of the barcode was ran on the Ruby 7s game, it was discovered that it wasn’t a winner.
In the Ruby 7s game, players scratch two winning numbers at the top. The player has 25 boxes to find a match to either one of those numbers and find out how much that match is worth.
Hamlin said, in Wines’ case, a blocked ink jet resulted in one character of a number to be concealed. She said the winning numbers were not in the play area for Wines’ card. Hamlin said lottery security agents looked over the ticket and compared it to the original image on the printer to determine that there was, indeed, no match made.
Wines said he was disappointed that the lottery commission would not pay him for what he thought he won. He said it was stressful to be told that you’re not getting them money even after you proved to them that you won it.
Hamlin said when someone presents the commission with a winning ticket, the agency will give them the money. She said last week a women who had the bottom of her ticket torn off came in to get her $1,000 only to learn she actually won $50,000. Hamlin said the commission wrote her a check immediately.
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The vital thing to remember here is that he did not fail to win because of the misprint: he won nothing because the ticket never was designed or intended to contain a winning line, misprint or not. You can understand his disappointment, and even sympathise a little with his feeling very hard done by. However, bottom line is the ticket was never going to be a winner, perfectly printed or not. The gesture of $100 in lottery tickets seems reasonable and I hope he takes it. After all, you just never know what might come of that this time around…