OHIO — The holidays are nearing, which means you may still have to do some last-minute Christmas shopping, so if you’re planning to buy Ohio lottery scratch tickets as a gift, there’s one in particular that’s recently been giving some gamblers an issue.
The concerns stem from the $2 ‘I’m Lucky and I Gnome It’ Ohio Lottery scratch-off ticket, which News 5 told you about in November when James Lester, a disappointed gambler, reached out to News 5 after he faced an issue with his scratch-off ticket, thinking he had won $5,000 based on the numbers he read on the ticket.
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We reached out to the Ohio Lottery Commission about the problem ticket last month, and the organization emailed us, saying they received a complaint in late October that the numbers on the ticket were difficult to read clearly, so they decided it was best to reprint the tickets with a cleaner font.
Since then, News 5’s Remi Murrey recently received an email from another viewer who told us she had a similar experience to Lester.
“I purchased more than one ticket. I got home, and I was scratching off the tickets when I was speaking to my mother. I’m like ‘Oh wow.’ I said mom, I just won $5,000,” said the Ohio Lottery player.
The gambler, who did not want to reveal her face or name, sent me a picture of the ticket in question to show where she thought she won $5,000.
She even said her family members thought the same thing after she texted them a picture of her ticket until she said she received a call from her dad.
“He said are you sure you have a good ticket because there’s a story out there, and it’s saying that the tickets may be faulty or a misprint,” said the Ohio Lottery player.
Because of her dad’s call, she said she went to her local Ohio Lottery Commission office and found out she did not win $5,000 because the lottery said the number was not 18.
“I really feel like they need to do some type of compensation to some people because even though we didn’t win, it clearly says that we did,” said the Ohio Lottery player.
In a full statement to News 5, the Ohio Lottery Commission said:
“A lottery prize is only paid if the ticket is a winner. All tickets have a barcode that the gaming system reads to validate a winning ticket. The gaming system is the system of record, and its results serve as the official results. As stated previously, as soon as the issue was discovered the tickets were reprinted with a cleaner font. If the previously printed version was still sold, it was still a valid ticket and would be paid if it were a winning ticket. If a player has a question about whether their ticket is a winner, they can scan the barcode or send the ticket in to be reviewed by our claims office.”
“Even if it’s not the whole $5,000, just something to kind of make them feel like ‘Okay, we can trust in our lottery system again,” said the Ohio Lottery player.
Our viewer said she did go back to her local store and found those tickets had been taken down.
