A 2-hour Christmas Day computer snafu turned every $1 Holiday Cash Add-A-Play ticket into a $500 winner in the South Carolina Education Lottery. Players took note and bought multiple $500 winning tickets before officials caught on. The lottery declared an emergency meeting for Friday, January 5, and also set aside $19.6 million, the possible total amount of the “mistaken” winning tickets issued, in case it determines to pay holders of the “mistaken” winning tickets.
The South Carolina Education Lottery said in a statement that Intralot, its computer system vendor, Intralot, experienced a programming error causing it to print the same Christmas tree symbol on all nine squares of the tic-tac-toe board, although there only are supposed to be five at most.
While the glitch was causing the “mistaken” winning tickets to be printed, people caught on and bought multiple tickets. One player, Nicole Coggins, told local NBC affiliate WYFF News 4 she and her mother-in-law won $18,000 after spending $100 on the game at multiple locations. But Coggins said when they went to collect their winnings, the redemption machine said their tickets were invalid. Lottery officials told players who bought a Holiday Cash Add-A-Play ticket on Monday between 5:51 p.m. and 7:53 p.m. should hold onto it until the completes an investigation.
The South Carolina Education Lottery has awarded 1.7 million scholarships to students in the state since it began in 2002. In fiscal year 2016-17, the lottery paid $400 million to education in the state and $1.09 billion to ticket winners.
