Top 5 reasons you could win the Georgia lottery — but never see a dime
Check the fine print. The lottery reserves the right to deny prizes based on a review of the ticket purchase, and since 2014 it's done that 270 times for winners of scratch-off games of a $1,000 or more.
Here are the top five reasons a winning ticket holder could be denied scratch-off prize money:
1. Trying to cash a ticket for someone else.
2. Claiming multiple winning games in a short period of time.
3. Failing to prove where or when you bought your winning ticket.
4. Claiming to have purchased a winning ticket before it was delivered to the store.
5. Failing to disclose a relationship with a store owner where tickets are sold.
Read how the lottery makes decisions to withhold prizes, and meet some Georgia winners who have been denied big payouts on myAJC.com.
About the Author
Dan Klepal is editor of the local government team, supervising nine reporters covering county and municipal governments and metro Atlanta. Klepal came to the AJC in 2012, after a long career covering city halls in Cincinnati and Louisville, Ky. He has covered Gwinnett and Cobb counties before spending three years on the investigative team.
