INDIANAPOLIS – Two recent would-be Hoosier Lottery winners received differing results from Tuesday’s Hoosier Lottery Commission meeting. One reaped thousands of dollars while the other request was denied.
Paul Marshall had a winning $50,000 Powerball ticket.
Hoosier Lottery participating retailers can’t pay tickets of more than $600, so when Marshall took his to a retailer, a machine spat out written instructions to visit a prize payment office.
But staff where he originally bought the ticket ripped the winning ticket up out of habit, Indiana Lottery Commission officials said Tuesday.
Marshall took the written instructions in, but without the ticket, the lottery couldn’t pay him.
The commission — a multi-partisan group of five gubernatorial appointees — approved the payout at a Tuesday meeting in Indianapolis. They did so by unanimous voice vote. Video of the retailer tearing up the ticket corroborated Marshall’s story.
But another winner wasn’t so lucky.
Drena Harris earned $500 off a scratch-off ticket and posted a picture of the ticket to her Facebook account. Before she could cash in, a follower used the image to con a retailer into making the payment, according to Taylor.
The lottery declined to pay out twice. By the time Harris appealed the decision to an administrative law judge, the retailer had gone out of business. The judge agreed with the lottery.
“Ordinarily, if she would have acted quickly and come in soon after, we could have possibly (obtained evidence), but the retailer where it was cashed … had not been a retailer for two months,” said Chuck Taylor, the lottery’s director of legal affairs and compliance.
That meant no video to access and no clerks to interview. “It’s not a decision that we enjoy, but … we can’t pay something twice,” Taylor added.
He said lottery policy prohibits retailers from paying out without a physical ticket, but officials couldn’t go after a closed business.
The commission approved the denial in another unanimous voice vote.
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