Arkansas Lottery hit by its first fraud attempt
Thursday October 22nd 2009The recently launched Arkansas Lottery has been hit by its first fraud attempt leading to the oganiser labelling the plan as ‘stupid’. Ruth Dennis, was promptly arrested after she presented a winning lottery ticket and the Arkansas Lottery Headquarters.
In fact, the lottery ticket had been altered to look like it was a $3,000 winner. Lottery staff are trained to spot fraudulent tickets and in this case it appeared that Dennis had copied and pasted parts of one ticket onto another, to pass one off as a winning lottery ticket.
If lottery staff had not initially spotted the alteration, it is well known that the various lottery operators world wide, use very high tec electronic verification systems to confirm lottery wins and these systems would have undoubtedly picked up the scam. The Arkansas Lottery, even being so new, would almost definitely operate in the same way. The fact that the Arkansas Lottery is so new, will probably see a few isolated attempts at fraud such as these in the early days as people feel they are able to beat the system before it becomes established. It will become apparent in time, to anyone thinking of following in the footsteps of Dennis in her lottery fraud bid, that this is not the case.
Lottery organisations world wide are always looking for way to minimise the risk of fraud as well as false claims. The fact that you can buy lottery tickets online decreases the opportunity for false claims on lost or stolen tickets. However, there will always be an opportunist willing to give it a try one way or another.