Feeling trashed by a Lottery ticket

An Elmira man who recently purchased a New York state instant scratch-off lottery ticket that contains the phrase "You Elmira trash" doesn't believe the word combination was an accident.

But the state Gaming Commission says the wording on the ticket was completely random and not intentional.

Nick Lynough, 22, of Elmira, said he purchased the $5 Wheel of Fortune lottery ticket from a machine at the Homestead Inn about two or three weeks ago.

"I just feel very disrespected about it coming from the New York State Lottery. I should be having fun playing the lottery, not feel offended while playing it," said Lynough, a full-time student at Corning Community College studying business administration.

"At first, I thought someone was playing a trick on me with one of those fake lottery tickets, but I guess it was real," he said Thursday.

The phrase is at the bottom of the ticket in the Person, Place and Thing categories.

Bar owner Sara Scheepsma initially believed the ticket had been tampered with and turned it over to the Chemung County Sheriff's Office.

"She thought there was something fraudulent," Sheriff Christopher Moss said. Further investigation, however, determined the ticket was genuine and was coincidentally sold in the Elmira area, he said.

"It doesn't look like the ticket's been tampered with at all," he said. "Once we found it wasn't fraudulent, it's not really a law enforcement matter."

Contacted by the Star-Gazette, the gaming commission issued the following statement:

"The New York Gaming Commission has confirmed that the unfortunate arrangement of words on this individual ticket was completely random, coincidental and — most importantly — unintentional," the statement says.

"The odds of these three words being selected in that particular order are 1 in 900 million. As soon as the ticket was brought to our attention, we immediately contacted the ticket printing vendor (IGT) to remove the word 'trash' from being a possible result for any future game. We apologize to anyone who was offended by this unfortunate result."

A spokesman for the gaming commission pointed out that the odds of hitting Powerball are one in 175 million, and the odds for Mega Millions are one in 258 million.

But Lynough is suspicious not only of the wording but of the fact that it was sold in Elmira.

"I personally don't think it was random," he said. "If it was random, it would have showed up somewhere else. It wouldn't have shown up in Elmira."

Kevin Keeley, president of the Chemung County Chamber of Commerce, said this ticket appears to indicate a breach of the integrity of the lottery system.

"It's absolutely something that the lottery commission's got to explore and ultimately resolve," he said.

"The fact that it was bought in this community — the whole idea of random scratch-off comes into question. If the scratch-offs that come to Elmira are not random, that's a bit of a disconcerting possibility as well," Keeley said. "What's at stake here is the integrity of the lottery system. That's why the lottery commission's going to have to get to the bottom of this."

In a follow-up email, gaming commission spokesman Lee Park emphasized that the wording was a completely unintentional and unfortunate random occurrence.

"Lottery protocols for ticket development, printing and distribution eliminate the ability for specific tickets to be distributed at a specific area. The process is 100 percent random and ensures random distribution across lottery agents. There is zero chance that anyone at the Lottery or otherwise could predict or direct where any particular ticket is shipped," he said.

"There are more than 750 names of locations among the more than 3,200 possible words that were approved by both the Lottery, IGT and Sony (which runs Wheel of Fortune). Many potential offending words were culled from the list prior to approval," Park said.

"The approved words used were categorized into a person, place and thing, and a computer program randomly placed the words within another computer file, which was then used to print the individual tickets," he said. "The computer program makes no effort to create phrases, as there is no need to create or uncover a meaningful phrase as part of the game."

Follow Ray Finger on Twitter @SGRayFinger.