Laos denies lottery manipulation

Following several complaints, lottery officials denied that their product is fixed.

Laos.- Laotian lottery players reported that the lottery winning numbers were being manipulated by the operators in order to avoid paying out large amounts of money. Lottery officials have been forced to publicly deny the allegations.

Lotteries were accused of different tactics to avoid giving players large sums of money. One of the tactics include a spate of winning numbers that Laotians wouldn’t normally choose because they deem unlucky, such as the number 67, which had three consecutive drawings last month and people associate with bad luck.

Players also reported machines rejecting requests for three-digit numbers ending in 09, a number that they view as lucky, and that day’s jackpot ended up going to tickets that contained the number 509.

The state lottery is currently operated by Thailand’s Insee Trading Company. Insee co-owner Sommaly Thammavong, said: “The lottery uses random numbers and is completely transparent, and there are no problems with the system at all.”