Maryland’s lottery agency awarded at least $10,000 in prizes to winners who showed fake identification — or none at all, according to a state audit released Wednesday.
Legislative auditors referred one case — when a prize winner was awarded $5,000 after showing a fake ID card — to the Attorney General’s criminal division office. Auditors said they were unable to locate any proof of identification provided by another $5,000 prize winner.
All together, a test of 44 prize payments totaling $291,000 showed seven cases of insufficient or no identification verification totaling $23,000.
Lottery officials blamed several cases on administrative error.
“From our perspective, these are minimal findings,” said director Buddy Roogow. “We always want to do better, but there’s nothing in here that speaks to the integrity of the state lottery agency.”
The audit criticized the lottery agency for not verifying that radio and TV ads valued at $2.1 million actually aired. Lottery officials said that the ads were “crawls” displayed at the bottom of television screens during local newscasts and were difficult to track.
