Glitch in South Carolina Lottery Could Mean $19.6 Million in Winnings

Intralot, which offers lottery and gaming services globally, could not be reached on Saturday. Representatives of the state lottery, which was closed for the holidays, did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment.

The holiday edition of Add-a-Play, a seasonal game, works like tick-tack-toe.

Players have a grid of nine boxes, each with a Christmas or winter-related image, like a snowflake, a stocking or a candle. The winning image was the Christmas tree. If there are three in a row — horizontally, vertically or diagonally — the player wins a cash prize.

For each grid, players can win a maximum of $100. Up to five grids can be placed on a single ticket. For about two hours on the evening of Christmas Day, many players were surprised to find all of their grids filled entirely with star-topped evergreens. It was not immediately clear how many players were affected.

Lottery players in South Carolina who tried to cash in on their Christmas Add-a-Play winnings after the game was shut down received slips that said “Transaction Not Allowed,” but the state advised them to hold onto their tickets while it decides what to do.

Add-a-Play tickets cannot be purchased alone. They can be bought only with a ticket from another game, like the Pick 4 or the Palmetto Cash 5. That didn’t stop players like Nicole Coggins of Liberty, who won, tried her luck again, saw the pattern and kept going, enlisting her mother-in-law to help.

Ms. Coggins told WYFF News 4 that they spent about $100 and won thousands of dollars, only to learn that the winnings were not guaranteed.

She had promised her children they would go to a Disney theme park, she said, adding, “I had been promising them for years and I thought I would finally get to, and now I can’t.”

Lottery glitches are uncommon but not unheard-of. A machine in Arizona reportedly generated the same sequence of numbers multiple times last month, and the same thing happened for several Keno games in Delaware in 2015.

Article Appeared @https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/30/us/lottery-south-carolina.html?hpw&rref=us&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

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