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Lawsuit filed over alleged lottery scam

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Illinois

A class-action lawsuit filed Monday in St. Clair County alleges the company that managed Illinois’ lottery defrauded businesses that sold scratch-off lottery tickets and individuals that purchased the same tickets.

The suit accuses Northstar Lottery Group of manipulating the number of tickets available for purchase.

The complaint alleges that Northstar designed and operated games so that when it calculated that a particular game was financially beneficial to its profit interests, it would stop sales of tickets for that game and actively collect tickets that had been sent to its vendors for sale. Northstar would then simply start a new game and the process would repeat with the new game.

“We allege that when Northstar realized that it was ahead of the consumer in a particular game, meaning it had sold a number of tickets that did not include the winner, it would stop the game and lock in its profits. The winning ticket never got sold,” said Derek Brandt, one of the attorneys on the case, with Brandt Law of Edwardsville. […]

Gov. Bruce Rauner fired Northstar as the state’s private lottery manager in 2015.

The complaint is here.

posted by Rich Miller
Tuesday, Feb 7, 17 @ 2:18 pm

Comments

Privatization wins again. Next up: public schools.

Comment by MSIX Tuesday, Feb 7, 17 @ 2:22 pm
Well, they WERE hired to maximize profits after all.

Comment by Biscuit Head Tuesday, Feb 7, 17 @ 3:03 pm
–“We allege that when Northstar realized that it was ahead of the consumer in a particular game, meaning it had sold a number of tickets that did not include the winner, it would stop the game and lock in its profits. The winning ticket never got sold,” said Derek Brandt, one of the attorneys on the case, with Brandt Law of Edwardsville. […]–

Sounds like fraud to me.

Geez, the house is already a big winner by playing a straight game.

Comment by wordslinger Tuesday, Feb 7, 17 @ 4:29 pm
Jail time.

Comment by blue dog dem Tuesday, Feb 7, 17 @ 5:30 pm
That’s spelled R-I-C-O.

Help me out, I honestly can’t remember, who was in charge of this under PQ?

Comment by Arthur Andersen Tuesday, Feb 7, 17 @ 10:02 pm
Only the lawyers will get rich on this one.

Comment by NorthsideNoMore Wednesday, Feb 8, 17 @ 4:17 am