Monday, March 26, 2007

Theft by Lottery Retailers

Lottery ticket retailers have been stealing from their customers. Big surprise!

According to the Globe and Mail, the Ontario Ombudsman’s report on gaming has just been released confirming the obvious and raking the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp over the coals.

The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. has "turned a blind eye" to crime and cheated money from the pockets of ordinary Canadians for years, says Ontario Ombudsman André Marin.
Anyone with half a clue could see that the system made it easy for retailers to steal winning tickets by blatant theft ("nope it’s not a winner") or substituting a losing or small prize ticket for a large prize winner. Many people don’t bother to check their own tickets and the self-check machines at lottery kiosks only indicated whether a ticket was ‘a winner’ or not. It didn’t say how big the prize was. Many lazy players (I know of some) don’t even bother to do this simple check - they just give their ticket to the retailer to scan.

If theft by retailers is easy, then it’s guaranteed to happen. But government lottery corporations, doing what government monopoly agencies do naturally, took an arrogant, lazy, sloppy, callous attitude and ignored the problem for as long as it could. They deserve every bit of abuse heaped on them by the Ombudsman.

Now I’m expecting the same result for the BC Lottery Corp.

3 comments:

Erik Sorenson said...

Quote: "They deserve every bit of abuse heaped on them by the Ombudsman."

No, the Ministers and Depty Ministers, and the boards of corps such as OLGC, deserve to be fired with, prejudice.

http://www.thiscanada.com/2007/03/26/daltons-swindlers-r-us/

It's time we started putting real penalties on incompetent governance and oversight.

Anonymous said...

Most of the lottery retailers just happen to be immigrants and visible minorities for some reason?

Anonymous said...

erik, Agreed. Heaping of abuse by Ombudsman is just a preliminary.