I believe post 13 explains this. The winner bragged about the ticket to the fraudster and showed it to that person.
Clearly the original buyer knows it’s a fake, the only question is whether or not he can prove it. At best he can help the lottery commission do an investigation. Of course, the counterfeiter can “help” too.
Isn’t this why they have a scratch-off panel that you aren’t supposed to scratch-off? Or printing under black ink?
I’ve not seen scratch-off panels on printed lottery tickets, where players can select their own numbers. I do see them on instant-win scratch-off tickets, where players cannot select numbers, but that’s a different item.
If there is printing under the black ink that is visible under certain circumstances, let’s assume the counterfeiter was able to scan the ticket under those conditions to learn the data and recreate the same values when the counterfeit ticket is printed. In other words, the “identical” counterfeit ticket as described in the OP is, in fact, “identical” when examined by the lottery commission. (Unless I misunderstand what you mean by the countermeasure you are proposing)
The fraudster would have had to get a very good shot, including the serial numbers, barcode, and timestamp.
In other words, the OPs hypothetical only works if the fraudster gets his hands on the original for a while, and can make a photocopy or a very good close up picture.
Does anyone know the answer to the original question? Assuming the forger printed a fake lottery ticket that was close enough to the original winning ticket that the lottery commission could not differentiate between the two, what would the prize payout be?
I’d guess the lottery board would assume that it was more likely the computer recording one single winning ticket were made was more likely to be in error than the counterfeiter had access to duplication technology sufficient to fool them and split the prize. That scenario would have to be considered at least, I’d think.
But I’m sure there’s no established policy on this. To establish a policy would be to admit that lottery tickets could be perfectly faked, and I really don’t think any lottery board would be willing to commit that to a policy.
I’d like to see a good source for that story, because I find it hard to believe.
What possible policy could there be that would invalidate any of the clerk’s tickets? A store clerk is allowed to buy lottery tickets, and anyone has the right to buy any sequence of numbers that he or she wants. I can’t imagine that whether the clerk bought them intentionally or accidentally would be covered in any policy (if so, why would he admit that it was an accident?); in fact it’s more likely that there’s a mechanism in place to immediately void any tickets that were printed accidentally. And if the clerk for some reason decided that those were certain to be the winning numbers, he could have done that and then bought the same numbers “legitimately”, right?
And then, of course, the odds of any set of numbers “coming up” being what they are, that happened in the very same drawing in which this other odd occurrence took place?
Sorry, it all makes no sense.
Interesting. It seems the prevailing opinion is that it is hard to duplicate a winning ticket. So hard that it might be more plausible for the printer to glitch and print two identical tickets with identical timestamps, but only reporting one such ticket. And we’re assuming the result is a split prize.
However, consider the history of counterfeiting. Paper money has been successfully counterfeited in the past. New safeguards keep getting added, but that means the old safeguards have not been invulnerable.
Compare that with a winning lottery ticket, which is essentially a multi-million dollar “bill”. It’s relatively cheaply made, with no sophisticated safeguards and no 512-bit encrypted RFID chips, no smart card technology. Millions of these are printed out on the cheap. Moreover, the tickets are printed everywhere, their origin is not restricted to Federal mints.
Sure, there could be a secret printed on there, but maybe the counterfeiter already knows the secret? If the counterfeiter cannot steal or reproduce a real lottery printer, surely a substitute printer could be made to work. Just look at the photo-realistic output from cheap desktop printers today.
If the lottery commission’s policy is to just split the prize, the counterfeiter can count on a huge payday. Which means it would happen more and more. Winners would need to keep their tickets out of sight and shielded from potential thieves with telephoto camera lenses. I don’t think this is the case, so help me reconcile this.
Well, yes, but you see, Counterfieters have plenty of real $100 bills to work with. Each Lotto ticket has a code and a bar code, so not only would you have to be able to counterfeit the general type of ticket, you’d have to know exactly what was on the winning ticket- verification code, bar code and timestamp. In other words, each ticket is unique.
If you just printed a generic ticket with the winning numbers, it wouldn’t have those codes and stamps and would be spotted as a fake in a minute.
So, why would the winner let you have his ticket to copy? Why would he trust you? Not only does it bring in a high change of the old switcheroo, but there’s just outright theft.
I think it’s pretty much impossible without the cooperation of both ticket holders. In California, each ticket has a unique 18-digit serial number. I don’t think that could be faked without the original ticket.
Joe
Reconcile what? This crime is practically impossible to pull off.
A person who wishes to counterfeit a ticket needs to have a serious setup ready and rearing to go. He needs to research the ins and outs of lottery ticket technology, and set up his own technology to counterfeit a ticket within days or hours of the winning ticket being identified.
Then, once he’s gotten his setup ready to go, he has to find the anonymous winner of a lottery, before that winner submits his ticket to the lottery commission. How, exactly, do you think he’s going to do this?
He’s going to stake out the lottery commission with a high powered camera? Sorry, too late, unless he’s got x-ray specs, a replicator, and a teleporter to get himself to the office while the victim is in the elevator.
Then, once he’s lucked into a close up view of an unsubmitted winning lottery ticket, he’s got to hope that there’s no camera footage of the ticket sale. Since the vast majority of convenience stores have recording security cameras, I think your counterfeiter’s chances are slim to none of ever having his scheme work.
Well, that, and it’s not like the money counterfitter has to fool that intense of an investigation. All you have to do is fool 2 or 3 people, and it becomes impossible to determine where the money came from, and you get off scot-free*. Think about it: most of the innovations are pretty obvious to even the untrained.
*And, no, that is not an ethnic slur, unlike welching.
There are millions of spendable $100 bills, and all a counterfeiter needs to do is make a reasonable copy of any one of them. No one checks the serial numbers to see if there is a duplicate in a bank vault in the next state. There’s only one winning ticket, and all the numbers and barcodes have to match the lottery commission’s records. Many more digits than a $100 bill has, and most of them are unobtainable unless you either have the winning ticket or access to the lottery records. Without access to one or the other, the potential counterfeiter has a virtually impossible task trying to guess those numbers.