Lottery Audit Complete

WE NOW KNOW WHAT CAUSED THE TENNESSEE LOTTERY TO FAIL THIS PAST SUMMER.

THERE WAS A PROBLEM WITH SOME COMPUTER EQUIPMENT.

ACCORDING TO AN AUDIT COMMITTEE... THAT ERROR PREVENTED COMPUTERS FROM PICKING THE SAME NUMBERS TWICE DURING CASH THREE AND CASH FOUR DRAWINGS.

YOUR CHANCES OF PICKING THE WINNING ONES ARE EQUAL TO EVERYONE ELSE.

Jerry Williams/Lottery Player: "Life is a gamble. So you gotta gamble."

BUT RECENTLY...PLAYERS LIKE JERRY WILLIAMS HAVE BEEN GAMBLING AGAINST IMPOSSIBLE ODDS.

IN JULY AND AUGUST...AN ERROR IN THE LOTTERY SYSTEM...MADE THE DOUBLE NUMBERS HE PLAYS IMPOSSIBLE TO DRAW ON CASH THREE AND CASH FOUR.

Jerry Williams/Lottery Player: "I play three of em...I play three of em that I play consistently that are double."

THOSE NUMBERS WOULDN'T COME UP BECAUSE OF A NEW COMPUTER SYSTEM THE LOTTERY BOUGHT TO REPLACE PING PONG BALL DRAWINGS.

WITH AN AUTOMATIC LOTTERY DRAWING.

Jim Ripley/Audit Committee: "There was a mistake made in a line of code. No one caught the fact that there was an error in that code"

JIM RIPLEY CHAIRS AN AUDIT COMMITTEE THAT'S BEEN LOOKING AT THE PROBLEM.

HE SAYS THE CODE ERROR WAS IN THE COMPUTERS WHEN THE LOTTERY BOUGHT THEM FROM A COMPANY CALLED SMARTPLAY.

MAKING MATTERS WORSE...THAT ERROR SOMEHOW WENT UNDETECTED BY A SEPARATE COMPANY THE LOTTERY HIRED FOR TESTING.

Jim Ripley/Audit Committee: "You know it was an unfortunate situation...there was human error we don't believe there was any human error on this end that could tell that was responsible for that problem."

SKY ARNOLD / FOX 17 NEWS: "Because of that coding error...it was impossible for the computer to draw duplicate numbers...what that means is if you picked 2-2-3...for example there's no way you could've won."

SINCE FIXING THE PROBLEM THE LOTTERY HAS HANDED OUT 700-THOUSAND DOLLARS IN REFUNDS.

Jerry Williams/Lottery Player: "When you're busy sometimes I don't get chance to watch the news all the time."

BUT SOME PLAYERS LIKE JERRY WILLIAMS NEVER TURNED THEIR CARDS IN...MEANING FOR 23 DAYS HE WAS LOSING MONEY ON A NO WIN SITUATION.

THE AUDIT COMMITTEE ALSO SAYS THE PROBLEM WAS EVEN MORE DIFFICULT TO NOTICE BECAUSE THE OLD SYSTEM SOMETIMES WENT TWO WEEKS WITHOUT DRAWING REPEAT NUMBERSLottery Audit Complete