I occasionally see news stories of a robbery or burglary where the perpetrator cops some scratch tickets along with the other stuff.
with the lottery folks simply be able to void that batch of tickets? or, even more, use those tickets to catch him if he tries to cash in?
They can absolutely turn them off. If they can determine the range that was stolen then the validator will just refuse to pay out when the ticket is claimed.
Aren’t scratch tickets activated in the lottery system at the moment of purchase anyway? They have serial numbers
No
I don’t see why not. Each one has a unique serial number, and they would track which ones went to which stores.
I doubt it’s worth the hassle if they stole a few tickets, but if there was a major theft or a murder then definitely.
I’m just guessing, but they would know the serial numbers that got stolen. Let’s say 1230001-1231000. Out of those 1000 tickets, the company that makes the tickets, could look up what the big winners were. If there was something like win $10,000 then that would be easier to flag, because they don’t get cashed out at the gas station. If there was small winnings like $5-$10, I could see the scratcher company just writing those losses off.