The Virginia Lottery announced a glitch in the system. On Sunday, the lottery started a new game called Super 7’s, but a technical problem caused the tickets to misprint. It led buyers to think they won a much bigger prize than they actually did. Before the error was caught, more than 2,300 tickets were sold. About 600 of them were printed incorrectly.
At the Little Giant in Pembroke, Patsy Sowers showed how the game was printed from a state-run computer system.
The Super 7’s ticket was a math game where seven was the winning number. The ticket printed out a grid with a number in each box of the grid. You add up the numbers in each row and column, hoping the total is “7”. For example, 2 + 4 + 1 = 7 in one of the rows Sowers showed us on her ticket.
For each seven you total, the prize got bigger. For example, the ticket explained if you added up seven 7s, you would win $577. If you added up eight 7’s, you would win $7,777. Sowers gave the game a try as she sold them to her customers. Sowers was supposed to get the top prize.
"I had eight 7’s on mine, which is $7,777. But the lottery people are saying they are misprints."
When she scanned her ticket, she earned two bucks. After receiving so many phone calls, the lottery quit running the game. It was an hour after Patsy sold the tickets in her store.
“They thought they were winning. We totaled it up and it would have been $24, 440 some dollars supposed to have been paid out,” Sowers said.
The manager at the Pembroke Stop N Save claimed she was also supposed to win the big money. Also, a customer over at the Hilltop Grocery had a winning ticket for more than $500. He only ended up with $3.
The Virginia Lottery sent a statement to stores on Monday afternoon, telling people to keep their played tickets. The lottery is talking to the Attorney General's office to determine if it should pay the winnings. However, the lottery also claimed every ticket posts a disclaimer to void the prizes if there are misprints.
Just ask Patsy.
"I think they should pay it,” she said.
And she’s keeping her fingers crossed her luck will change.
The Virginia Lottery is calling the mistake a software downloading error. The lottery says it’s talking to its gaming vendor, GTECH, to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement