Imagine the day you wake up and win $500,000, and then go to bed having it all taken away from you again.
John Winces thought he had come upon his golden ticket, when his $20 ticket had all the winning numbers. In a state of shock, John went to collect his winnings, but left without his fortunes.
The ticket was actually misprinted, with a block ink-jet printing one of the numbers incorrectly.
Officials scanned the barcode on the ticket, and were forced to tell Wines that machine was defective and they could not pay out his ticket.
Instead of $500,000, the 65-year old was offered $100 worth of scratch cards.
“If you thought you won $500,000 and had somebody tell you that you didn’t and you can prove to them you did, it’s pretty stressful for somebody to say, ‘no you’re not getting your money’. It’s like I told them, I didn’t misprint it. I bought the ticket in good faith thinking if I won I was going to get my money.
“And they told me no. They absolutely, positively told me no.”
The company has since issued a statement saying they are aware that there was a flawed batch of tickets released in New Mexico and thanked Mr.Wines “for bringing this to our attention”.
