Suspicious wins prompt review
Atlantic Lottery Corp. is reviewing its security policies for processing winners after a recent media report alleged that ticket retailers have won a suspicious amount of prize money in Ontario. “We just felt it would be prudent to do so in light of everything that has happened,” Mike Randall, a spokesman for Atlantic Lottery, said in an interview Friday.“We have re-examined what we’ve done and are comfortable with what we’ve done.”
The CBC-TV program The Fifth Estate analyzed statistics of retailers’ wins and found that more than 200 retailers or clerks had won prizes of more than $50,000 in the past seven years, and about two-thirds of those cases were suspicious. The matter is being investigated by the Ontario ombudsman.
Atlantic Lottery employees and retailers selling the company’s products aren’t barred from participating in the games, but the corporation doesn’t feel there’s any risk of fraud, Mr. Randall said.
“There’s no way to affect the outcome,” he said. “We’re confident in the security measures.”
In 2004-05 and 2005-06, there have been 20 retailer wins of more than $10,000 in Atlantic Canada, Mr. Randall said. That’s out of a total of about 900 wins, he said.
“It works out to be about 1.5 per cent, so we’re quite comfortable with that,” he said.
He acknowledged it’s possible many more retailers could be winning prizes less than $10,000, but the corporation cross-references those wins with a list of retailers.
“It’s not possible to track them all because not everyone signs the backs of their tickets,” he said.
The corporation also has other measures in place, such as training for retailers.
Over the past three years, there have been six complaints where Atlantic Lottery winners didn’t feel they received what they were entitled to, he said.
“We investigated them all,” he said.
Four turned out to be invalid complaints and two resulted in two customers being paid prizes of $23 and $273 because two high school clerks in different provinces didn’t understand how to pay out lottery wins, Mr. Randall said.
Mr. Randall said Atlantic Lottery also encourages people suspecting they were defrauded to contact the police.
Scratch tickets are printed in a bonded facility outside of Atlantic Canada, while other games are produced while auditors watch, Mr. Randall said.