Hundreds of winning lotto tickets showed 'not a winner' message in error: BCLC

Lotto ticket error tells winners they didn't win The B.C. Lottery Corporation admits hundreds of scratch-and-win tickets that scanned as "no prize" were actually winners after all.

British Columbians who played a new scratch-and-win lottery this week are being told to recheck their tickets after hundreds of winners were mistakenly told they didn't get a prize.

The error impacted the new $3 Road to Riches scratch-and-win tickets, which launched on Monday. The B.C. Lottery Corporation said 1,898 tickets were checked and of those, about 503 winning tickets accidently displayed "not a winner" messages when scanned at a terminal.

"BCLC began to review ticket validations for $3 Road to Riches after a player contacted BCLC on June 6, 2022, regarding a ticket that showed as 'not a winner' on a ticket-checking terminal, even though the symbols scratched on the ticket corresponded to a prize," the organization said in a statement.

"Out of an abundance of caution, BCLC later suspended validations for the $3 Road to Riches game while it reviewed the issue."

The system was reportedly fixed by Tuesday morning and BCLC said no other tickets were impacted by the system's incorrect messages.

The tickets have a top prize of $50,000 and the likelihood of getting that prize is about one in a million. Of this week's winning tickets, about 83 per cent were for tickets that won $3 to $15 prizes. Fifteen per cent were for free-play tickets. The most won on Monday was $100.