"Everyone's a winner!" ...literally.

The New York Daily News has a "Scratch N' Match" game with cash prizes of up to $100,000. Lots of people, including myself, follow the game each week hoping to win even one of the smaller prizes.

This past Friday, the paper printed a wrong number. (Read about it here). They printed #13 instead of #12, and BOY, were a lot of people happy! There were $100,000 winners all over the place! One of my co-workers also won. But today, I heard stories from a lot of people about how their friends, and friends-of-friends went out and did crazy things when they learned they won. One person went out and bought tickets to Disney! Another took his whole family out to dinner to an expensive restaurant! Another called a real estate agent to put a down payment on a house!

The paper said they can't pay on everyone's prize, and have said they'll do a random drawing of those who "won" for the available prize amounts. As you can guess, a lot of people are VERY upset. A few have already threatened lawsuits. At least they have better chance of winning now.

You should always wait til you have the money in your hands, or at least that they verified you as a winner.

DAMMIT!! I CAN'T FIND MY SCRATCH CARD!!!!

UPDATE (3/22/05): Now, The Daily News is offering a drawing for just the people won with the incorrect number. $1,000,000 (one million dollars). "More than 12,800 individual cash prizes".