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The CBC has learned that the OLG does not keep complete records of all its retailers and clerks. As the OLG's Director of Optimization Alex Campbell testified in court in March 2005, "We have over 10,000 retailers in the province and on average, five, six, seven employees per retailer. … What we typically have is the owner's name, [and] the contact for the telesales position if it happens to be different. But we do not have a listing of all of the employees' names."
The OLG asks anyone making a claim on a major prize if they work for the OLG or sell lottery tickets. What this means is that clerks who may be claiming someone else's ticket and are not in the OLG's records would have to tell the truth about being insiders to subject themselves to an investigation.
What might be more troubling is the fact that this insider win policy only takes effect on claims of $50,000 or more. Any amount less than that, be it $10, $100, or $10,000, is not subject to the investigation.
Bill Hertoghe, the chief investigator for the California Lottery where they investigate all major prize claims from retailers and members of the public alike, says that it's the theft of smaller prizes by retailers that are often harder to catch. "We get enough complaints to know that it occurs. It's the big ones that catch everyone's attention. … [But] it's the 20 and 50 and 100 dollar ones that - that are slipping through that we have no way of validating unless we know about a pattern going [on]."
Despite this, there are still flaws in the system, and clerks have tried
to circumvent these measures. Christopher Weller is a former OLG technician
who serviced old lottery terminals to help the Corporation incorporate
new technology that was more resistant to sabotage. Even back in 1992,
clerks were taking steps to prevent the customer from hearing the music
and thus, knowing whether he or she had won or not. "They were concerned
that clerks were either somehow putting something over the speaker to muffle
the sound, or physically harming the speaker, [such as] poking a pin through
it… to stop it from playing the sound."
So if a customer didn't already know if their lottery ticket was
worth something, they might walk out of the store empty-handed.
That was 14 years ago and since that time, the OLG has made a concerted effort to address many of these problems. In the past five years, for instance, the OLG has taken several technological measures to assure the lottery-playing public that they can't be cheated.
Some of these measures include:
However, the onus is still placed on the player to catch a potential thief in the act. A convenience store clerk the fifth estate spoke to in Coboconk, Ont. says that even with the new screens, players need to pay attention to see what they've won. "If you aren't paying attention when the music starts, you don't see it. Because lots of people, they'll be standing here talking and then when the music starts to play, by the time they get their eyes focused to the smaller things they don't see it."
Bill Hertoghe of the California Lottery reminds us that as an investigator, the problem will continue to exist as long as there's lots of money at stake and the potential for retailers and clerks to give in to temptation. "We're dealing with humans… There are thieves among us, including in the retailer ranks and including the clerks. So yeah, that potential - that is there, and that's why we're looking into it."