Ont. lottery corporation apologizes after misprinted tickets raise false hope

Ont. lottery corporation apologizes after misprinted tickets raise false hope

Tue Jan 6
By Michael Oliveira, The Canadian Press

TORONTO - As many as 1,100 misprinted scratch-and-win lottery tickets were in circulation in Ontario before being recalled, the province's lottery corporation admitted Tuesday as at least one man lamented that his dream of collecting a $135,000 windfall won't likely be realized.

A small percentage of the three million $3 Fruit Smash lottery tickets recently printed had some misaligned or mismatched symbols underneath the latex surface that game players scratch away, said Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp., spokesman Don Pister.

The error was only caught after lottery players called the lottery corporation, he said, and the misprinted tickets were pulled from stores the same day.

Twenty-seven-year-old Thomas Noftall of Brampton, Ont., was beside himself after it appeared he won the top $75,000 jackpot and a combined $60,000 from three other Fruit Smash tickets.

Noftall claims he was initially told by a lottery employee that he would be paid even though it appeared his win wasn't legitimate.

"I was freaked, I started yelling to my wife, 'We really did win, we really did win,"' he told Toronto radio station AM640.

Noftall, who acknowledged he assumed the lottery corporation had legalese in its fine print to protect against misprints, said he's since been told he probably won't get anything at all.

The OLG does have a clause that says it will void tickets for a variety of reasons, including if they are misprinted or produced in error.

Pister said he doesn't know how many players may believe they won on misprinted tickets and how or why the tickets appeared to look like a winner.

"I haven't seen the tickets. I don't know how various individuals may be interpreting what they're seeing," he said. "The only response we can give is we apologize if they're having any confusion whatsoever."

It was also not clear how many of the 1,100 misprinted tickets might appear to be winning tickets.

Scratching the entire latex surface on a misprinted ticket should reveal it's not a true winner and it would not scan as a winner at a lottery retailer, Pister added.

But he said each complaint would be treated individually.

"You can just present it to us, we'll check and if you're due a prize we'll pay it, of course," he said.

The entire line of Fruit Smash tickets were not pulled from stores because the proper number of legitimate winning tickets were distributed, Pister said.

There were three prizes each of $75,000, $25,000 and $10,000 up for grabs.

The odds of winning any of those top prizes are one in a million, while the odds of winning any of the 848,369 lesser prizes with Fruit Smash tickets is one in 3.54, according to the OLG.

Pister said the misprint error is "extremely rare" and there are extensive quality control and assurance procedures at various stages of the ticket printing process.

"Obviously you can't scratch and play every single one of the three million tickets but there are various checks done by us as well as by the ticket printer."