UPDATE: Response from Florida Lottery
Since our inception more than 26 years ago, the Florida Lottery has taken great strides to protect our players from unscrupulous activities. It is a duty we take seriously and we have made great investments in 2014 to strengthen those protections. Earlier this year, we instituted the “sign your ticket” consumer awareness campaign and added a distinct sound that plays on the Lottery terminal to indicate that a ticket is a winner. We have enhanced our retailer contracts and our retailer education program to reinforce the potential consequences for retailers found to break the rules. We have strengthened our internal security protocols, formalized stronger relationships with other law enforcement agencies and initiated a review of prior investigations. We have also completed a reorganization of the Lottery’s Division of Security, including personnel changes and hiring a new Director of Security.
There is strong evidence that our efforts are already paying dividends. We have taken administrative action and terminated over 30 retailers since spring of 2014. The problems we are addressing affect a fraction of a percentage of our 13,000 retailers that may have acted improperly or committed a crime. It is unfair to characterize the vast majority of honest retailers due to the actions of a few.
One thing we can be sure of is there will always be attempts to defraud the lottery, but we will remain vigilant. We invite the public to learn more at http://www.flalottery.com/integrity-protect.do.
Palm Beach, Fla. (AP) - The Florida Lottery knew since at least 2009 that some retailers illegally cashed in tickets and at times lied about it. But top officials appear to have done little to address the issue until this year.
The Palm Beach Post Reports Sunday that the agency has caught at least ten clerks in the last five years for illegally cashing tickets for their customers. But these clerks were punished only with 30-day suspensions of lottery sales or not at all. The response changed in March, when the Post revealed the process of the schemes to illegally cash tickets. Customers sometimes sell their lottery tickets to avoid paying taxes, child support or other debts. The act is a misdemeanor.
Since then, the lottery has stopped sales at 30 stores across Florida.
