* Tribune…

State lawmakers from both political parties are calling for an investigation of how the Illinois Lottery managed scratch-off games in response to a Tribune report showing the lottery didn’t award many of the biggest prizes in the biggest games.

“I just don’t think we should promise people things we don’t deliver,” said state Rep. Lou Lang, D-Skokie. “And if we say we have a game that’s going to pay X and it doesn’t pay X, then we’ve lied to the people who bought the tickets.” […]

Illinois handed over management of its lottery in mid-2011 to a private firm, Northstar Lottery Group, and the Tribune studied the 17 biggest-prize instant games that were begun and ended in the five years since.

Reporters found most of those games did not award all of their grand prizes and some did not award any. In all, those games awarded less than 60 percent of their grand prizes — a rate lower than other states studied by the Tribune, and lower than when Illinois managed its own lottery. The Tribune also found that, because of how the games ended, the lottery often paid a lower percentage of revenue than the games were designed to pay.

One $30-a-ticket game, for example, pitched the biggest instant grand prize in Illinois history: $46 million in periodic payments. But it was pulled from store shelves before it awarded either of its two grand prizes. Its designed payout rate — nearly 78 percent of sales — ended at 61 percent of sales. Had it paid out at its designed rate, players would have won an additional $10 million, the Tribune found.

The original story is here. I didn’t post it on Friday because I wasn’t quite clear on what the alleged scam was all about. You have to kinda read between the lines. For instance…

Take the game The Good Life: $30,000 A Week For 30 Years.

Based on internal design documents kept by the lottery, the game was designed to award 78 percent of its revenue — most of it in smaller prizes but anchored by two mammoth grand prizes.

It was pulled after selling less than 15 percent of the tickets printed; no grand prizes were awarded.

On an Internet bulletin board devoted to core lottery players, one poster lamented to his peers: “I don’t know why they are pulling it, but … I was playing this game for months and feel they must have made a whole lot of money and paid out very little.”

Indeed, by then, the game had raised about $63 million in sales.

It awarded about $38 million in smaller prizes.

The payout rate ended up being just shy of 61 percent, 17 percentage points less than the designed rate of 78 percent. […]

Because of when games were ended, and payout rates being lower than designed, the excess money was counted as profit — a metric for which Northstar was judged.

So, if I’m reading this right, the company apparently ordered far more scratch-off tickets printed than could possibly be sold, which would greatly lower the odds that somebody actually buys a winning ticket. Then, the game was canceled without any big payouts.

If that is the allegation, the Tribune doesn’t clearly spell it out. But it sure makes it look that way.

Also, for grand prizes that cost $1 million or more to fund, Illinois’ payout rate was about 60 percent, while New York’s was about 80 percent, Pennsylvania’s was 83 percent, Texas’ was 88 percent and the rate was 100 percent in Florida, Massachusetts and Ohio.

So, something seems to be amiss here.

…Adding… Some commenters are reflexively pointing to Gov. Rauner as the source of this problem. But Rauner is the one who has fought the privatized lottery manager from back before he was even sworn in. And then he made good on that threat once in office.

I know the Rauner hate can be strong, but some of you really need to take a breath.