The Lottery and Fraud. Canada

For those of you who are able to receive Canadian TV signals your attention is directed to the fifth estate show to be broadcast on November 2nd.

As is often the case, people who have purchased lottery tickets simply hand them to the clerk in a lottery vendor who scans the ticket electronically and verbally announces to the customer the "results".

As in several places in the United States the vendors are often minority businessmen who have coached all their clerks to have a non-winning ticket near the bar code scanner so the customer will hear a disappointing beep while the clerk palms the real ticket.

For a 12.5 million dollar prize seven years ago suspicions were raised when an Ontario lottery vendor claimed to have won the main prize.

The show will deal with the investigation, statistical analysis, computer surveillance, data mining and women's intuition in the hunt for the actual winners of the money.

I think it would be an interesting show and a springboard for discussion here, but I am NOT able to view or record the show, so please may we have some of our Canadian members set up their VCRs or whatever. The CBC does not allow fifth estate videos to be shown outside of Canada.

Perhaps their will be discussions in the popular press or in specialized gambling publications.

flea,
in the US, we scan our own tickets.
there's a scanner near the lottery machine, which is usually located away from the cash register so to not prevent/delay other customers from paying while you're chekcing

Quote: 100xOdds

flea,
in the US, we scan our own tickets.
there's a scanner near the lottery machine, which is usually located away from the cash register so to not prevent/delay other customers from paying while you're chekcing

Many people now do use the self service scanners, most of which were installed after some very unsavory publicity about the California lottery and several vendors there, but the winning message is still the same for a four dollar win as a four hundred thousand dollar win, so trusting customers often just give the winning ticket to the clerk and believe the clerk when he says "you won four dollars".

Still its an interesting story of statistics and data mining.

The Ontario lottery had a history of knowingly ignoring the ultra high win record for their retailers (ie, the obvious fraud that was taking place on a massive scale) since dealing with the fraud would cut into sales and therefore profits.

deleted

Quote: Ibeatyouraces

There was a Dateline NBC, 20/20 or one of those investigative shows a few years ago showing these scams.

Did it by any chance involve Chris Hansen and Mike's Hard Lemonade? :)

Quote: 1BB

Did it by any chance involve Chris Hansen and Mike's Hard Lemonade? :)

You're half right: Part 1 · Part 2 · Part 3 · Part 4 · Part 5

Would you guys say that the majority of people don't look at their own lotto tickets beforehand to find out what they've won? I mean I understand if you buy like 40-50, but the vast majority are on the order of 5-10 and I find half of the fun in comparing the numbers on my own.

Very good story just finished watching it. The one guys sister who was dying told him a few times before she died to call the OLG because he was the winner. After she died he felt he owed it to her to make that call..... $14+ million later everybody knows she was right. This guy had to travel around Ontario with the OPP ( Ontario Provincial Police) for 2 days pointing out all the places he had bought tickets, had to get records from his employer as to where he was working that year ( to prove he was in the area the tickets were purchased. Afterwards he asked how he was doing and they said he was 100% correct on the facts...he asked how the others were doing....they replied 10% correct was next best....basically he was the real owner of that $12,000,000 ticket. but he was told he had to keep it too himself ( the fact they felt he was the winning ticket owner)

He was broke at the time and met with one of the other guys that was in on the ticket....asked for $3000 loan..guy asks when he was going to pay it back and he said he wasnt. Guy was like why would I lend it too you if you dont plan to pay it back....he lets it out that they were the lucky winners of the $12 million, guy doesnt believe him, makes a phone call to the OPP officer and has that investigator talk to him saying yes they were the winners...he got his loan but had to pay it back

Hope it gets posted online and you can watch it , it really was interesting

Thanks for the posting.
The CBC does not allow fifth estate shows to be streamed on the internet and if they are posted anywhere on the internet the CBC takes them down.

It was so bad in Ontario they had to change the way the game was played....too many INSIDERS ( read lottery retailers) were cashing in too many jackpots

http://www.ombudsman.on.ca/Files/sitemedia/Documents/Investigations/SORT%20Investigations/a_game_of_trust_20070326.pdf

I believe statisticians were employed to show that the "insiders" had to have been winning in a fraudulent manner, not just that the figures were suspiciously high.

It was clearly a case of officials wanting their high salaries and growth of the lottery revenue rather than an honest game.

The RCMP posts a good background story on general lottery fraud in Ontario here.

Ontario has taken alot of steps to reduce fraud at its lottery retailers. Indeed, there were huge scams where many lottery retailers would tell the recipient that their ticket didn't win, and then keep the winning ticket for themselves and cash in. OLG didn't have a fraud team to investigate the nature of their win. Only until a full analysis of the winners was complete did OLG realize how statistically impossible it was for the proportion of winners to lottery retailer winners. I'm sure they had an earlier inkling of it but chose to cover it up because they should have realized this far sooner than it did.

Now, for off-line games, (scratch tickets), there used to be a two letter code at the end of the scratched off code that would reveal the size of the prize. That has now been replaced by the "scratch and scan" bar where you scratch off a code and self scan them at a check machine. All tickets must be signed before they are checked by the retailer, no exceptions.

For on-line games, you must sign your ticket before it is scanned. You can self-scan as well any on-line ticket to see if you won -- all lottery retailers have a self-scan device for customers to scan their tickets. The lottery retailer must return the ticket to you with a slip showing the result. If you are a winner, the size of the prize and a sound showing that you've won a prize plays on a large screen completely visitble to the customer. Once a ticket has been scanned, it cannot be scanned again.

Of course, there are still chances for fraud: the retailer can have a bank of non-winning tickets, scan those in and give that slip to you showing that you lost. You would have to reconcile the ticket number on the returned slip to your own ticket number (which are in full view). A retailer could claim that the video was not working and hand you a non-winning prize or simply tell you they didn't win.

Lottery retailers cannot buy their own tickets anymore from their own establishment; they have to go to a non-affiliated store to buy tickets (a 7-11 employee cannot go to another 7-11 to buy tickets). So, any scam involving purchasing / cashing their own tickets would need to involve another lottery retailer.

And finally, OLG has stepped up its own fraud detection and investigates all large wins before making a payout (and adds interest). While this creates long dealys in some cases while it determines whether you purchased a ticket legally, it ensures that the province is making its lottery products fair. In the case of lottery retailers winning large prizes, I imagine that process is much much longer.