I’ve got three stories today about gamblers who thought they’d won and got nothing. First, the sorry tale of David Fasulo. In good faith, Fasulo entered a fantasy betting contest promoted by Woodbine. The challenge was to make mythical bets on 12 harness races on December 13. From the onset, the track promised prize money of $10,000 – $6000 to the winner. As Fasulo, a HorsePlayer Interactive subscriber, watched the races that night, he saw many of his picks win. Until late in the evening, Woodbine was updating the standings on-line and Fasulo saw his name posted in first place. However, software screwups scrambled the process and Woodbine decided to call the contest off before the last race. To compensate those who had entered the contest, Woodbine deposited $10 into the acocunts of each of the 575 people who had played. I was one of the beneficiaries of the ten bucks, but Fasulo feels he’s entitled to much more. So far, he’s had no luck. Making this all the more strange, on New Year’s day, I was out at Woodbine, and at the bottom of the escalators that carry the bettors to the second floor was a large stand alone billboard promoting the Deecember 13 contest. What stood out to me was the promise of $10,000 Guaranteed. What does the word ‘guarentee’ mean these days?
How about the Ontario Lottery Corporation? As if they hadn’t created enough grief for themselves in the last two years. It’s been shown that millions of dollars of winnings have been stolen from legitimate winners and cashed by corrupt and greedy terminal operators. Today, Thomas Noftall of Brampton has no faith in the OLG’s integrity. Noftall bought four $3 Fruit Smash scratch tickets. The scratch and win contest pays off if certain fruits all line up. On Noftall tickets, they did. As described on the tickets, his co-ordinated fruits promised him a $135,000 winfall. When he went to collect, he was told that his tickets were among 1,100 misprints – they weren’t really winners even if they appeared to be. The OLG is refusing to pay Noftall.
“We’re apologizing to everyone and anyone who feels they were at all confused or inconvenienced by this,” says the lottery in about as lame a response as you could imagine.
Thomas Noftall feels inconvenienced. Here’s a guy who has probably blown a lot on scratch tickets and suddenly he has a huge win in his hands. Get a lawyer Thomas.
Now, Noftall’s sad experience pales in comparison to that of Joel Ifergan of Montreal. Ifergan bought two Lotto Super 7 tickets moments before the 9:00 PM cutoff time. The tickets were printed and handed to him. He paid for them. The next day, to his extreme delight, Ifergan saw that he had all 7 correct numbers for ajackpot win of $13,500,000.
Loto Quebec had some very bad news for him. The tickets, though purchased at 8:59, did not get processed until 9:00:07 – 7 seconds after the shutoff deadline.
Ifergan is being told he is not entitled to any payoff. Loto-Quebec does admit that there is a 10-12 second transmission delay, which would mean Ifergan’s ticket was created before 9 pm..it just didn’t get through the system in time. If that could be seen as the Lottery’s error, Ifergan has a strong case. I’m sure he has his lawyers working hard on this.
As someone in his late 50s, I come from a generation in which it was preached that ’the customer is always right.’ These gambling horror stories seem to suggest quite the opposite.
The moral…gambling is for losers. Take the money you would normally reserve for wanton betting and put it into something secure and reliable…like General Motors stock.
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