In his 30 years as a lottery vendor, N.S. Simon, 56, from Nileeshwaram, was never cheated till a man successfully sold him four dummies as prize-winning lotteries last month.
After a hiatus of a year when he took a break for cancer treatment, Simon was back selling lottery tickets when a man on a two-wheeler stopped him on the tracks like a long-lost acquaintance on September 22.
“He wanted to know why I was not around and then asked me whether I could encash four tickets for which he had won ₹1,000 each. Since he acted like an acquaintance, I did not suspect any foul play and paid ₹3,600 in cash and issued tickets worth ₹400,” he said.
But he was in for a shock when the District Lottery Office returned the tickets, saying that the ticket numbers were tampered with. “Who would have thought that people would even cheat a cancer patient,” bemoaned Simon. Since then, he had paid the money back to the dealer in small lots.
Cheating of unsuspecting lottery vendors, especially the aged and the sick, using the facade of tickets having won small prize money seems to be quite rampant in the district. Twin ploys have emerged as the popular routes for such cheating — tampering to match the number of winning tickets as published in the media and outright forgery of making colour photocopies of such tickets.
“These fraudsters never directly approach agencies, knowing fully well that they are likely to be caught. So, they cunningly choose poor vendors who can be easily fooled,” said A.V. Prakashan who runs a lottery agency at Kalady from whom Simon bought the tickets.
Tampering of tickets is so skilfully done that it is hard to detect with the naked eye, while forged tickets rival even the original ones in appearance, and in some cases, even pass the vetting using scanners.
Meanwhile, Lottery Traders Union said it was seized of the matter and had raised it with the Lottery Department. “Bar codes have been issued as an additional security feature, while vendors have been given lens to closely verify the tickets. We have held awareness classes and asked vendors to avoid such payments as far as possible and instead direct such people to agents,” said Shaji Edappally, district president of the union.
Senior Lottery Department sources said such complaints come up at the monthly monitoring cell meetings convened in the presence of the District Collector, and the District Lottery Officers concerned lodge police complaints.
However, poor vendors end up losing what little of their hard-earned money.