When John Wines scratched off a $500,000 prize on his lottery ticket, he was understandably ecstatic. But when he went to calim his prize, everything went south.
The New Mexico Lottery commission informed Wines that his ticket was a misprint, and was not supposed to be a winning ticket.
They responded to him by email with the following message:
“We did find a flaw in that particular pack of tickets and it’s been reported to our printer. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. I did complete a reconstruction of your ticket and it was not a winner.”
Wines is upset about it and disagrees with their reasoning.
“I mean, if you thought you won $500,000 and somebody tells you that you didn’t, and you can prove to them you did, it’s pretty stressful for somebody to say, ‘no you’re not getting your money,’” said Wines. “If it was $50 or $75, I would not think a thing about it. But this is $500,000. That’s a half million.” he told reporters.
They offered him $100 in lottery tickets as a consolation prize for their mistake.
[WHOTV]
