CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Would you still buy a scratch off lottery ticket if you knew you couldn't win the top prize? You may have already done so unknowingly.
A Defenders investigation found people in the Carolinas are likely spending money with the hopes of winning big, while not knowing someone else already claimed the jackpot.
It's all the result of a lottery process that allows retailers to continue selling tickets even after top prizes are won and games end. Some stores immediately pull those games from the case, while others keep selling them.
"You're selling it and there's no hope of winning, it's kind of like cheating," lottery player Gabriella Clowers said after we told her what we discovered.
Take Carolina Cash for example. The $5 game advertises a top prize of $200,000 on the ticket. Even after all of the top prizes were won, we still were able to buy a ticket in late August. Today, almost two months later, the lottery confirms there are 1,260 Carolina Cash tickets still out there.
"We work as fast as we can to get those ticket back from the store to the lottery," NC Education Lottery Communications Director Van Denton said.
WCNC asked Denton if he felt it was misleading that consumers are able to buy tickets that advertise a top prize of $200,000 when the prize is no longer possible. According to Denton, it's not misleading.
"Again, you can just ask the retailers, 'Are the top prizes here?'" Denton said. "The lottery players are smart and engaged people. They're making smart decisions with their money."
Players can protect themselves. The lottery makes an updated list of remaining prizes available online, in-store, through its app and by calling its customer service line, but a longtime critic of the lottery said officials need to do more to protect players who often have modest incomes.
"What's the most egregious about the scratch off tickets is that in many instances there is literally no chance at winning," NC Policy Watch Director Rob Schofield said. "It still says on the ticket you might win $5,000, $10,000, but you literally can't win, because the game has gone, as the lottery officials describe it, 'stale.' It's no longer fully really in play. It's just sort of a silly notion to think that we can inform everybody that plays the lottery by merely posting these things online."
While Schofield calls it a scam, the lottery defends its practice.
"The N.C. Education Lottery wants its players to know the odds of its games and prize information and so it widely disseminates that information," Denton said. "The more information players have, the more responsibly they will play. That helps the lottery [ensure] that it operates fun and fair games to raise money for a good cause. If someone [knows] of better safeguards than what the lottery currently has in place, it would certainly evaluate them to see if they would be useful in North Carolina."
The NC Education Lottery will officially end eight games on November 9. Those include some games with no top prizes left. The state insists it stopped marketing and advertising the scratch-offs in question long ago and argues just because you can't win the top prize, it doesn't mean there aren't other valuable prizes still available, from vacation packages to actual cash.
"Some lotteries keep the game going even when all top prizes are won," Denton said. "After all, there are still valuable prizes that can be won. But in North Carolina, our policy has been to begin ending the game as soon as all top prizes are won. It can take up to three weeks before all of the remaining tickets are picked up and returned...The end-of-game pick-up is a three to four-week process. There are 6,900 retail locations located across a big state."
That three to four-week process took much longer for some games. Denton told us hurricanes are to blame.
"One challenge since August, when top prizes were won in both Carolina Cash and $200 Million Blowout, is responding to the impact that Hurricane Florence and Hurricane Michael had on our retailers in those areas and helping them recover in terms of getting the lottery part of the business," Denton said. "As I said, we are committed to ending games as soon as possible when all top prizes are won and our procedures call for that. We are also committed to continuous improvement."
