Illinois lawmakers call for investigation into lottery

Comment #27

Illinoisdreamer — Wed, 08 Feb 2017 01:19:47 GMT

First lawsuit has now come (3 players + store in Fairview Heights) seeking class action status alleging fraud , etc

Also when Illinois ran its lotto the grand prizes in games were awarded 87.5% of time. Under Northstar that dropped to 59.6% and its alleged that was so Northstar could maximize profits by pulling games early

Will be interesting to watch and this lawsuit and other potential lawsuits could open door to an actual investigation by state in Northstars conduct

Comment #26

LottoYear — Mon, 30 Jan 2017 03:21:39 GMT

In 2005 Massachusetts released a scratcher called Texas Hold Em where 560 randomly selected prize winners would be selected to play a virtual poker game for $10 million. The scratcher fell out of favor and by 2012 only 501 people had been randomly selected and four had died. The virtual poker game was finally held in 2013, won by Eugene Condon, Jr.

Back in 2005, a Lottery Post poster said that it was nearly impossible to tell if you won the game. He had to pull his scratcher out of the trash

Comment #25

OldSchoolPa — Fri, 30 Dec 2016 12:53:19 GMT

I meant $10K For Life. The very first $10K For Life top prize was purchased from Springfield HQ vending machine. And then they pulled the game...fishy

Comment #24

Coin Toss — Tue, 27 Dec 2016 05:07:57 GMT

Good point. Closing a game before any top prizes were paid out implies there ws never any intention of paying the top prizes.

Comment #23

Illinoisdreamer — Mon, 26 Dec 2016 19:27:58 GMT

?

Your last sentence makes no sense and is clearly false as no 30k a week prizes were ever awarded. Its one of the main points of the investigation as potentially the most high profile of games in which no grand prizes were paid out despite all the $ spent and amount of tickets purchased

Comment #22

OldSchoolPa — Mon, 26 Dec 2016 04:47:35 GMT

I used to avoid scratch-off games until I noticed the $10K per Week for Life game had been in play for over a year with majority of the top prize tickets still in play. So I started scooping them up with my discretionary income wherever I could find them. That is when I saw the trend of Northstar starting to pull the tickets out of retail stores. At first, I just thought they were pulling them out of slower selling locations and redistributing back into higher traffic locations that also had the... [ More ]

Comment #21

LottoAce — Fri, 16 Dec 2016 10:56:42 GMT

1) I wonder, what effect if any is this scandal going to have on further ticket sales?

2) will anyone besides an escape goat be held accountable for any of this

Comment #20

Zebekyia — Thu, 15 Dec 2016 17:38:29 GMT

I'm so glad that people are starting to catch on. If you want some insight in how this is pulled off I can tell you how they accomplish this in Indiana which is just as corrupt as Illinois is.

The part of the scheme that everyone is missing is the new games and ticket distribution methods. How they are able to accomplish their so called Low performance sales numbers is that they target an abundant amount of new tickets for release to purposely pull tickets from distribution to artificial... [ More ]

Comment #19

Redd55 — Thu, 15 Dec 2016 15:51:46 GMT

Calif is suppose to pull the game after the last top prize is sold. However, they use to award one top prize after the game was pulled via second chance entry. The problem was that in one of their $5 million dollar scratchers, one top prize went unclaimed for 2 years. Finally, they just pulled it and had the second chance drawing. I was okay with that.

Comment #18

JoeCanWin — Thu, 15 Dec 2016 07:49:23 GMT

I quoted from the article:

The firms said that even if all grand prizes were not awarded in games, the odds of winning were the same for each individual ticket.

What jerks. While we care about odds, we care about honesty and the amounts being what they are claimed for all the tickets printed and sold as should be for the benefit of the game and the players that hope with the real odds of winning a big one.

Are these sleaze-bags really trying to justify their cheating scratch-off buyer... [ More ]

Comment #17

HaveABall — Thu, 15 Dec 2016 01:06:00 GMT

I think it should become a law, in all countries, that an instant game can't be closed/canceled until at least 1 of its grand prizes has been redeemed/claimed

Comment #16

JoeBigLotto — Wed, 14 Dec 2016 21:59:08 GMT

The sad part of all this is that the pick3 games and pick4 games are all computerized draw and they expect the public to believe they are using reasonable judgement. Am very sure i won't scratch in illinios any more because at this point you are better off scratching your Butt lol They are beginning to make the iowa lottery security thief and the tipton family look good . Really sad

Comment #15

JoeBigLotto — Wed, 14 Dec 2016 21:35:54 GMT

Today is a sad day for illinios state lottery. First and formost if you win they don't pay or give you i owe you and now they coming up with better tricks not to let anyone hit big . Wow did you guys in illinios just employ mr Patel another idea only him can come up with. Here is the problem the game designer got paid big based on sales, the state got paid big profit based on sales but the player had no chance of winning the jackpot in the first place because the game ended before any big win .A... [ More ]

Comment #14

cbr$ — Wed, 14 Dec 2016 15:46:07 GMT

The integrity of the Illinois Lottery was already in jeopardy. From earlier in the year when they couldn't

pay- out for winning tickets.They pass the buck to their governor their budget as the cause to this

problem. Now, at the time this happen 3 busloads of people call us tourist to attend something in IL

These tourist purchased lottery tickets some didn't get paid. So, IL. little lottery problem didn't stay in

state people were telling other people about it before it became... [ More ]

Comment #13

Lottonovice — Wed, 14 Dec 2016 14:31:43 GMT

OMG! Exactly! Thinking the same thing. Where is the logic in their comment?!!! I mean, suppose nothin' from nothin' = nothin', so yeah, guess = same odds for all players! Nothin

Comment #12

KY Floyd — Wed, 14 Dec 2016 07:51:04 GMT

Your odds depend on the tickets that are in stores and can actually be bought, not whether or not anybody buys a ticket with a particular prize. If it's no different than your odds if you bought a ticket for last Saturday's PB. Just because nobody won the jackpot doesn't mean your ticket didn't have the usual odds of winning.

The potential problem here is that the tickets that were distributed to stores may not have represented the advertised odds. If nobody won a grand prize because no grand... [ More ]

Comment #11

helpmewin — Wed, 14 Dec 2016 05:57:27 GMT

When they done with Investigation: Illinois and NC Send them over to Indy

Comment #10

Romancandle — Wed, 14 Dec 2016 02:46:09 GMT

The firms said that even if all grand prizes were not awarded in games, the odds of winning were the same for each individual ticket.

Huh?

What about for the games where no grand prizes were issued?

The odds were ZERO chance in those cases...

Comment #9

itpmguru — Wed, 14 Dec 2016 00:58:42 GMT

Officials from IGT could not be reached for comment. .....................................let me put on my shocked face

............And after that investigation is complete up there, they need to come to NC and do the same with our instant and draw games. I keep waiting for the day the Dept of Justice comes to investigate Alice and her Minions with orange prison jumpsuits in tow

Comment #8

Coin Toss — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 22:53:20 GMT

Any entity not planning on paying action that they booked should not be allowed to book any action at all.

Comment #7

adulane62 — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 19:32:26 GMT

Al Capone's grandson must be running the Illinois Lottery! Why you cheatin' $cumb@g$! We knew Chicago was the most corrupt city in America, now the WHOLE state might have joined in on the fun too

Comment #6

brees2012 — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 18:39:09 GMT

Don't buy any tickets because this company running the lottery , ripping

off the people off ........and keeping the millions of dollars .....

What happen to Illinois schools not receiving $$$$ ...

More likely someone putting $$$$ in their pockets

Comment #5

Groppo — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 16:59:55 GMT

.

Though I wish there were more comments up to this point, I do appreciate what I've read about

the state(s) pulling the game, before all big prizes have been paid out.

I can count on both of my hands how many scratch-off tickets I've ever purchased.

Comment #4

Unluckyone — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 14:56:06 GMT

People have to be crazy to buy lottery tickets in Illinois!

Without a doubt

Comment #3

Unluckyone — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 14:54:58 GMT

Your point has a lot of merit. With no accountability disclosure, anyone who plays scratch offs is at the mercy of the state that runs it. I have reviewed many top prize payouts and have seen that many scratch off games still have a large number of top prizes that haven't been won and this mind you is from games that started back in 2014.

I personally won't waste money on scratch offs period.

Comment #2

Tialuvslotto — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 14:53:32 GMT

A scratch game should never be pulled until every possible prize has been paid out. Anything less is just fraud.

People have to be crazy to buy lottery tickets in Illinois

Comment #1

rcbbuckeye — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 13:37:01 GMT

This is why I rarely play scratchers. You don't know if or when the top prizes have been distributed. I think most states close games before all the top prizes have been claimed.

In Texas, they are getting ready to close a $5 game that started with 14 $100,000 top prizes, and there are still 7 of those top prizes unclaimed. Did they even release all the cards with top prizes? Who knows. The game was brought out in July. That's just wrong.

Illinois lawmakers call for investigation into lottery

Lottery Post — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 13:24:54 GMT

State lawmakers from both political parties are calling for an investigation of how the Illinois Lottery managed scratch-off games in response to a report showing the lottery didn't award many of the biggest prizes in the biggest games.

I just don't think we should promise people things we don't deliver, said state Rep. Lou Lang, D-Skokie. And if we say we have a game that's going to pay X and it doesn't pay X, then we've lied to the people who bought the tickets.

Lang was joined by stat... [ More ]