OFF BEAT: New Mexico lottery denies $500K 'winner' on a technicality

A printing error has dashed a luckless New Mexico man's lottery dreams.

According to published reports, John Wines thought he had won $500,000 from an instant lottery ticket he purchased at a gas station in Roswell, New Mexico. After scratching off the winning numbers, 1 and 2, Mr. Wines attempted to redeem the ticket at the gas station only to be told that his ticket was not a winner.

Mr. Wines subsequently raised the issue with officials at the New Mexico Lottery, who indicated that a mistake in the printing process failed to distinctly print a second row of digits next to the ones visible on his ticket.

While the New Mexico Lottery did offer him $100 in hopefully well-printed lottery tickets to compensate him for the confusion, an understandably aggrieved Mr. Wines seems far from satisfied with the outcome.

“It's like I told them, I didn't misprint it,” Mr. Wines said. “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.”