503 scratch ticket winners in B.C. were falsely told they hadn't won, lottery corp says

Because of a system error, 503 people who played a new scratch-and-win game in B.C. this week were wrongly told they weren't winners, according to the provincial lottery corporation.

Everyone who purchased a "$3 Road to Riches" ticket on Monday should recheck their tickets to see if they won a prize, the B.C. Lottery Corporation (BCLC) said in a statement on Tuesday.

The BCLC says it's working to notify players as quickly as possible about the issue, and it sincerely apologizes for the mistake.

A total of 1,898 scratch tickets were scanned on Monday at retailers or on BCLC's Lotto! app, and more than a third of them should have won a prize but returned a "not a winner" message instead, the statement says.

About 83 per cent of the false losingtickets were for prizes worth between $3 and $15, and 15 per cent were for free-play tickets. Seven tickets should have won $20, two$30 and one$100.

The lottery corporation says it noticed the problem after a player reached out when the symbols on their ticket showed they'd won a prize, but a ticket-checking terminal said otherwise.

BCLC temporarily suspended validations for the "$3 Road to Riches" tickets while it looked into the issue. The statement says that as of 5 a.m. on Tuesday, the validation process is working correctly again, and no other games were affected.

Anyone with questions is asked to contact the BCLC directly.