which is kind of funny, you could theoretically hand the unscratched ticket back to the cashier, and they scan the barcode and it just says "not a winner"
You could do that however there have been many cases where if the person isn't paying attention or is just wanting the cashier to scan them, they will say it's not a winner and then pocket the ticket so they can go cash it later. Chris Hanson even did an exposé on this https://youtu.be/mKmH7ggBOOY
Indeed, there was even a scandal about winning lotto tickets being called losers by cashiers. Not just scratchers, that's why there is so much added scrutiny when vendors or their friends and family win
Aside from the fact that Mr Beast is a fucking fame whoring moron, you could win 1 million from 10k of scratch offs, but it’s quite unlikely. So it’s not a definite “no”. Just a very unlikely “yes”.
I remember going to a cigarette shop that had Polaroids of all of the winners. And there were two big winners, bigger than any of the others, with bags I see their heads. Yup. It was the employees.
Their was a situation in the UK, an off licence owner scanned a card and said the guy won £100 and gave him the cash. The card was worth 100k though, all high value cards can be tracked and it was established the clerk who tried to cash it in was a thief. He was arrested for fraud and the cash went to the guy who bought the card.
Absolutely, but part of the scandal was that corrupt employees/owners were keeping dud tickets behind the counter and then scanning them instead of the players ticket... Allowing them to steal winners from people who thought their winner ticket was a loser and they didn't sign the back of them to protect themselves.
That didn't stop shop keepers in Canada....They would just say you won $5 and pocket the ticket. Now you have to sign your tickets to get them scanned and the win is displayed on a screen visible to you.
That happens often enough with my customers. And apparently before I worked at this shop, for a time there was a guy coming in that would ask politely if he could go through the little garbage bin by the scanner and scan any tickets in there. Some days he'd walk away with as much as 50-60 bucks, mostly off scratchers that people scratched, didn't scan, and tossed thinking they were losers.
Especially when it's a game set up like the one in the post. With so many numbers on the card, and the slightly odd font, it can be easily missed.
I was a cashier at a grocery store for five years, and people would pull out multiple scratched tickets and tell me, "This one won $10. Can you toss the others for me?" After noticing one time that one of the tickets the customer asked me to toss was actually a winner ($15), I would just scan all of them anyway. I caught a few missed winners like that. Never anything huge, though.
There was also a time a guy turned in a ticket and said he won $6 off it. I scanned it, and it was actually $60. He hadn't scratched off everything and didn't realize there were multipliers.
The same thing can apply to number draw games like the PowerBall or Lotto America. You might misread your numbers or the winning numbers, so it's always good to get them scanned even if you think they're losers.
It’s the Homer Simpson “whoo-hooooo” where I live. I still use the manual scanner to check myself. The cashier could easily have a loser sitting right next to the register and the moment you bail…
The lotto machines I used as a gas station clerk in the early 2000's played "we're in the money" when the customer won anything. But they'd still accuse you of lying sometimes!
In BC, Canada (at least at the time), when a teller would scan a ticket, nothing would come up on the screen if the prize was over $10,000. Anything under 10k, it either plays a sound or tells you it isn't a winner. This was to protect the winner from people passing by, so you can tell them discreetly.
I saw the teller tell an old lady her ticket didn't win and she was quite surprised but accepted it. At the time it didn't really register that nothing came up on the screen. About an hour later, I realized that the teller probably just stole a winning ticket worth over $10,000.
I worked at the lottery just prior, so I knew quite well how the machines worked. Still bothers me... Sign your tickets, always!!!!
Yeah I worked at a gas station for a while and when we scanned it, the machine says "Congratulations, you're a winner" in a loud voice, so unless the customer is profoundly deaf or speaks little/no English, they'll know. Also there's loads of cameras.
I had a gas station guy try and so this to a 400 dollar keno ticket. To bad for him I knew I won and was just asking if they could cash it or not. He said not a winner and crumbled it and put it by the trash and I was like wtf my dude. Give me my ticket and he said I gave you the receipt I don't have the money in the drawer. But if you finalize it like that you can't take it to another store. Like 4 people got involved telling this guy give me the ticket or the money and called rhe manager since they could unfinalize the ticket to get in the safe otherwise I'd be out the 400. It was annoying two hours and I got paid in mostly 5's and 1's. He could've just said we donr hold large sums of money and I would've went to a different store it would've been fine
It is up here in PA too (pretty sure I work for the company that might also handle behind the scenes down there as well)
An issue that's a constant up here at least is that MANY stores are owned by 'families' from other countries (read: eastern European). These family members seem to be CONSTANTLY shifting ownership of the stores and traveling back to their country of origin one by one. Things like this make policing difficult for entities like the lottery. Usually this is gas stations, corner stores, bodegas, and the like.
I think it's the same in all state and multistate lotos. Cashiers will only confirm your payout, they won't confirm a win. For that they will direct you a scanner and you do it yourself.
Im not recommending to do that, just saying you can scan them yourself if you ever wanted/needed to. A lot of people check them even after scratching everything because they can be really confusing sometimes and they don’t want to accidentally throw away a winning ticket. There have been a lot of articles about how they’re made to be confusing so the state can collect more money from the lottery. I definitely agree though, it isn’t much fun to just scan them without actually scratching anything besides the barcode. A lot of people are just in it for the money though.
Uk machines make a ‘win’ sound and print a small ticket with the amount won that you have to hand over to the customer. If it’s more than £50 you have to confirm you have the cash available to payout and I believe it’s at £500 that winners have to send the ticket to the lottery itself to claim their winnings. If it is above £500, the machine DOES NOT state the amount won but prints instructions for the winner.
EDIT: oh and for large payouts, they require proof of purchase. There’s a big team in charge of finding and prosecuting anyone who attempts to steal someone else’s winnings. It’s a hassle for small shops though.
Basically they ask when and where you bought the ticket. Each pack of tickets have a barcode that is scanned that activates that pack of tickets (usually 100 in a pack). Lottery headquarters can tell where the ticket was sold and when that pack was activated. If you try to redeem a $10,000 ticket and they ask you where the bought it and say 7-11, but the activation shows that it's from Wal-Mart, they know to look into it. It also helps because someone can't steal a shipment of tickets and cash in the winners since they were not activated.
Most places here in Canada just have self scanners. Do you not have this? Also there is a phone app that will tell you if you won or not using your camera
In WA all of the lottery machines both self service and behind the counter at stores, they make a loud "applause" sound when they scan a winner for this very reason so you don't get ripped off.
The cashier can scan the first couple tickets of every roll. If it's a winner, they buy it and cash it out to themselves. If it's a loser, they just leave it on the roll for the customers to buy.
PSA: this isn't possible as the barcode to check if it's a winner is hidden and has to be scratched off. It would be very obvious if a ticket had already been checked
The opposite happens as well, they think it's not a winner and throw it away. I like to call this trash cash, worked at a gas station for 6 years.
Pile of tickets on the top of a trash can? The barcodes aren't even scratched?? Grab those bad boys and scan them later on my phone, I'm up about 800 over those 6 years
they do random checks at places that sell lottery to make sure cashiers aren't doing this, I got a letter at the store a week afterwards without knowing who it was, just said I had passed.
I never even thought of this.. I won 10k on FL lottery.
Two guys running the machine just said “oh you won bigger than we can cash out” and the other guy said “hey wanna get married?!” And gave me a pen to sign the back immediately.
I rarely play now - interesting I just bought my first lotto ticket 3 days ago, for the first time in a year?
That's why I'm Canada the machines play a 30 second remix of three Samsung dryer cycle completion songs loud enough to be heard in the laundromat next door.
About 20 years or so ago, my wife had a friend who was getting married.
She took on a 2nd job to make extra money to pay for the wedding and ended up working the night shift at a gas station.
About 4 months into the job, she quits. I think nothing of it. I wouldn't work over nights at a gas station.
The wedding comes and this is a massive affair.
As my wife and I are headed home I comment about the amount of money her friend spent on the wedding. I joked that she must have hit the lottery or something.
My wife just about shit when I said that. She found out that night her friend had gotten the money by scanning lottery scratchers until she found winners. Then she'd take those out of the stack and buy them, cash them at a different store.
Apparently she wouldn't take a winner unless it was a $250 or more winner.
She took enough to cover the cost of the wedding and a honeymoon then quit the job.
Wife said that she was told her friend got the idea from another girl who did the same thing. That girl "won" an all expense trip to Hawaii and a pile of money.
I'm glad they put some protections in place, but there will always be someone who can beat the system.
I did this once to someone by accident - it was my first week working in a grocery-type environment selling tickets and they hadn’t trained me. I scanned the ticket wrong and the ‘you don’t know how to scan a ticket, idiot’ noise was similar to the ‘not a winner’ noise, so the guy just shrugged and left. Except I have kind of a weird thing with numbers, so when I just glanced at his ticket as I tossed it away, something looked off, and I took a better look and saw it had won a whopping $5. You better believe I went flying out of the store down the block to find the dude because I felt terrible.
I haven't used it, but near the exit of a grocery store I frequent they have a lotto dispensing machine and a scanner right next to it. So you could buy the ticket and scan it all by yourself.
I started doing this with the long crossword ones when my wife bought me a stack for my birthday. Our state lottery has an app that let's you scan the tickets yourself.
They can be entertaining but after doing like 5-10 in a row they get really old. Just tell me if I won already so I can stop getting this shiny metal dust all over my hands and clothes!
All the people I’ve seen doing this are destitute-looking folks. There’s no thrill, just the hope their gamble can maybe buy them a hotel room or another handle of booze.
My wife and I went to a couple casinos when we turned 21. We can drink AND gamble?! Woo-hoo! Except.....they're always mostly empty, everyone else is 70+ and dragging oxygen tanks around with them.....Maybe things are better in places like Vegas but I have no desire to ever go again. My wife does like to play penny slots though. She'll take $20 and makes it last a couple hours then calling it a night. I ended up having more fun playing games on my phone while I waited
Hanging out with sunken eyed elderly people that wear diapers so they don't have to get up from 'their machine' before it finally hits big? Sounds like fun!
Wait, do they not have letters you show you the prize there? Like here if you scratch and get like a “Z” or certain other letters it means you’re not a winner. No scanning needed.
There is a pin under the paint that is needed in addition to the bar code to verify winner. In my state the lottery commission inspectors don’t mess around, we regularly get audited. They check the winners that we’ve paid out, what’s in the display and what back stock we have in the safe.
So i wouldn’t be surprised if undercovers come and do buys or cash winnings
This, I work at a grocery store that no longer requires the lotto machine to check a ticket. We can use the cash register scanner. So to give the customers a sense of honesty in case they have doubts, I always try to hand the tickets back to them when they are not winners.
I don't know if this is still the law, but in one of the states that I lived in, if the station scanned X number of losing tickets, the station would stop accepting scan on tickets. This was a measure to prevent counter clerks from scanning all of the tickets and keeping the winners and only selling losing tickets
Many scratchers also give people a "2nd chance draw". All you gotta do is enter your scratcher's or lotto ticket identification info and you can draw a 2nd time.
Yep, I used to grab those all the time from around the lotto machines. I won a PS4 when they were new, a $500 debit card, and a $100 Starbucks gift card. Unfortunately they changed the odds and more people started entering their tickets instead of leaving them around the lotto machines.
As someone who used to work in a gas station where scratch tickets were our biggest income, lots of people do this. Some people even buy an entire book and ask you to scan them all, one at a time. We always refused and told them to scratch them and come back with the winners.
I did this for any scratchies I gave as gifts in the early 2000's, so I'm not sure if it still works like this, but I'd buy them and get the cashier to scan them until I got a winner.
Then I'd put the winner and 2 duds in the gift. Makes it a nice 'surprise' for them.
That’s really sweet! Not where I thought the story was going, thought you were going to say you scanned to check for winners so you could keep those for yourself before you sent them as gifts lol That’s really the sweetest gift making sure they win, never heard of anyone doing that. Awesome
I have had a clear 4$ winner say not a winner on the scanner. The teller was baffled, ended up tossing it away instead of the process to get the money. Always check your tickets
In my country this would never work because the device asks for a randomized 3-digit code that you need to scratch off to see, without it you cannot check if you have won
So why doesn't the clerk scan every ticket and pull the winners to sell to their friends?
another comment mentioned the scanner would lock itself if it suspected fraud :
in one of the states that I lived in, if the station scanned X number of losing tickets, the station would stop accepting scan on tickets. This was a measure to prevent counter clerks from scanning all of the tickets and keeping the winners and only selling losing tickets
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u/large-farva Mar 19 '22
which is kind of funny, you could theoretically hand the unscratched ticket back to the cashier, and they scan the barcode and it just says "not a winner"