Misprinted Lottery Scratchcard Leads to Confusion, Frustration
Wednesday January 7th 2015The New Mexico Lottery has maintained that a Roswell-area retiree who claims he won $500,000 on a scratchcard has become the unfortunate recipient of a misprinted ticket. John Wines purchased his Ruby 7s tickets from a local gas station in December on a whim and was shocked to see that he had won a large amount of money.
The top prize for Ruby 7s and Emerald 7s is $250,000. To win a prize, players must match any of their numbers to the two winning numbers at the top of the card. The scratchcard Wines purchased had 2 and 1 listed as the winning numbers, with the top prize value assigned to 1. He uncovered several of the winning numbers, thinking that he won $500,000 in total.
However, Wines received some bad news when he tried to check the scratchcard; the clerk who scanned it revealed that it wasn’t a winner after all and had been misprinted. When Wines got in touch with lottery officials to find out what had happened, they said that closer inspection of the ticket showed that the 1 shown on the winning line was actually part of a misprinted two-digit number.
New Mexico Lottery officials have offered Wines $100 in lottery tickets, but he insists that the misprint wasn’t his fault. “I bought the ticket in good faith thinking if I won I was going to get my money,” he said.
Lottery.net would like to remind readers to read the instructions and rules for any scratchcard they buy as carefully as possible. Contact local lottery officials if you are unsure about any part of a game’s procedure.