Florida lottery refuses to pay winner

From WFTV in Florida...

She thought she won $250,000 in the lottery, but the lottery said it's not paying. The lottery said what appeared to be a winning ticket was a misprint.

Tina Coley buys her scratch off tickets at the same store every week. She said she almost had a heart attack when she matched a number for a quarter of a million dollars. But the Florida Lottery said the ticket is a misprint and Coley's only entitled to $20....

Friday, the Lottery issued a statement saying they print 500-million tickets a year and that "the very nature of any mechanical printing process can never guarantee 100% accuracy."

They said, under the number two, a partial printing of an abbreviation for 22 appears, so the lottery decided the mistake should play out in their own favor.

I always said that the lottery is a tax on stupid people. It appears that now they're taking that to heart. This sounds like the guy who raffled off a dead donkey. When someone asked if the people got mad when they found out the donkey was dead, the guy said, “Just the winner, but I gave him his money back.”

Posted by Danny Carlton at August 2, 2005 08:36 AM