Hoover sued the Virginia Lottery because he felt betrayed. Many people can feel betrayed when we all learn that Virginia isn't the only state to sell tickets that have no top prizes available. "USA Today estimates that about half of the 42 states that have lotteries were, as of early July, continuing to sell tickets after the top prizes are claimed. Lottery officials from some states say the practice is fair because lesser prizes are still available, and they say tickets and lottery Web sites make that clear," reports CNN.

On June 12, 2008 the Executive Director of Virginia Lottery Paula Otto released a statement addressing the situation. However, how can millions of people buy lottery if they already know they have zero chance of winning.

Statement from Virginia Lottery

On Wednesday, June 11, 2008, we received a Notice of Contract Claims from the Roanoke law firm of Lichtenstein, Fishwick & Johnson PLC concerning the Virginia Lottery’s scratch tickets and top prizes. We have reviewed this claim.

The Virginia Lottery stands by the integrity and fairness of its games.

The stated odds accurately represent the odds of winning at the time of printing scratch tickets; however it is the nature of scratch games that the odds of winning change constantly based on ticket sales. We use the Lottery`s Web site as a tool to inform players as quickly as possible when prizes are redeemed and when games are ending.

We are aware when the final top prize of a game has been claimed and we have policies and procedures in place to end public sales of the game quickly. Retailers are required to stop selling the game immediately and return unsold tickets to the Lottery. The Lottery collects and destroys remaining tickets in any scratch game after the final top prize has been claimed.

In the past, to replenish tickets in some scratch games, the Lottery reordered the game before the top prize was claimed. The Lottery cannot predict when a game’s final top prize will be claimed. Therefore, there was a chance, even after the final top prize was claimed, that tickets from the first order remained on sale as distribution of the second order began. This scenario is allowed under current Virginia Lottery policies and procedures. However, because of computer system and barcode changes, there have been no reorders since July 2007, and there are no plans for reorders in the future. To reflect our operational practice since July 2007, the Lottery is in the process of updating all internal policies and procedures to totally eliminate reorders.

We conducted a thorough check of all games currently in retail locations, involving millions of tickets, to make certain that every game offered has top prizes available.

For media inquiries, call Virginia Lottery Communications at 804-692-7778.