Mobile UPI  |   About UPI  |   UPI en Español  |   UPI Arabic  |   UPIU  |   My Account
Search:
Go

Woman sues to prevent lottery leftovers

|
|
 
  
Published: Aug. 10, 2008 at 4:48 PM

COLORADO SPRINGS, Aug. 10 (UPI) -- A Colorado woman is suing to prevent state officials from selling scratch-off tickets after top prizes have been given out.

LaVonne Watkins, 35, objects to the practice of selling the tickets after the advertised $10,000 top prize in the Luck of the Zodiac contest has been won -- sometimes as long as two months before. Her legal action aims at ending the practice, also used by about half of the other 42 states with lotteries, reported the Los Angeles Times Sunday.

"The issue is: How long do you leave a ticket in the marketplace, knowing there may not be a top prize left but loads and loads of lower-tier prizes?" said David Gale, executive director of the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries.

Colorado's lottery director, Jack A. Boehm, said his state's approach is to close games after the last top prize is claimed unless a "significant number" of lower level prizes remain.

"A lot of players don't play it for the jackpot. They play for the intermediate prizes," he said. "They get mad if we close a game too soon."

Topics: David Gale
© 2008 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI content is expressly prohibited without UPI's prior written consent.

Order reprints
  
Join the conversation
Most Popular Collections
Notable deaths of 2012 Scripps National Spelling Bee AmfAR Cinema Against AIDS gala
Indianapolis 500 Presidential Medal of Freedom Memorial Day around the nation
Additional Top News Stories
1 of 20
Singer Janelle Monae arrives at the 2012 MTV Movie Awards in Universal City, California
View Caption
Singer Janelle Monae arrives for the MTV Movie Awards at the Gibson Amphitheatre in Universal City, California. UPI/Jim Ruymen
fark
Man turns dead pet cat into remote-controlled helicopter, calls it art (w/WTF pics)
"Good News" clubs teach children in public schools the Biblical importance of killing all nonbelievers...
Five arrested in prostitution sting. Article lists their names, ages and distance from a church
Photoshop this power tower technician
Driving drunk and unlicensed, with a kid not even buckled let alone in a safety seat, en route to...
Man killed in Spencer fire. The lava lamps must have ignited the blacklight posters