In an audit report on the Pennsylvania Lottery, the state auditor general said the state lottery should be given broader legal authority to uncover fraud by investigating repeated winning claims by individual lottery players.
Auditor General Tim DeFoor said the performance audit of the lottery, one of the nation’ largest and highest-earning, said the lottery needs to look for patterns that can indicate fraud. The audit uncovered 17 players who each filed more than 50 claims for wins over $600 over the past three years.
The claims, which totaled $2.7 million in winnings, have been found to be statistically improbable based on prior studies, DeFoor wrote. Additionally, the audit found that one of the 17 winners is the spouse of a lottery retailer, who filed 42 other claims during the same time period.
