/ 26 September 2006

Misprinted lottery ticket sparks short-lived joy

Ecstasy turned to agony for a South Korean lottery winner when he presented a winning ticket only to be told he could not claim the prize of $1-million because of a printing mistake, officials said on Tuesday.

The Prime Minister’s Commission on Lottery has called off the sale of Speetto-2000 instant scratch-and-win tickets after printing errors resulted in the circulation of more than 10 first-prize tickets instead of the regular four, a spokesperson for the Office for Government Policy Coordination said.

“We suspect that errors might have occurred when the printers were transmitting tickets-producing data to the printing system,” the spokesperson said.

Officials of the Prime Minister’s Commission on Lottery said it was not legally obliged to pay out on any of the six misprinted tickets.

Provisions printed on the back of the tickets stipulate no payout unless coded numbers shared by the issuer, the bank and the printer match.

One of the four authentic winning tickets has been presented to the commission and scooped $1-million.

Printing errors affected about 7 000 of the 20-million tickets printed in he last six months and about 90% of the tickets had been recovered, the commission said.

The Speetto-2000 lottery has earned $37-million this year. Proceeds go to welfare projects. — AFP