Welcome To New Mexico: Worthless Lottery Ticket

His wife is right: New Mexico will never pay:

By John Wines' calculation, the scratch-off ticket he bought at a Roswell, N.M., gas station is worth $500,625. The state lottery says it is worthless.

Wines, a retired heating and air conditioning repairman, bought the $20 "Ruby 7s" ticket on Dec. 6, and went to his car to scratch it off. When his effort appeared to reveal four prizes - two of $250,000, one for $75 and another for $50, he excitedly ran back in to present it to the cashier.

"She scanned it in the machine and told me it isn't a winner," Wines, 65, told FoxNews.com. "I couldn't believe it."

It turned out the ticket bore at least two critical misprints above the $250,000 jackpots. Wines' winning numbers, listed on another portion of the ticket, were 1 and 2. If either of those appeared above the prize, the ticket is a winner. Wines' ticket appeared to show a 1 above both of the six-figure payouts, but an abbreviation code for the single-digit numbers did not match. It indicated that one was supposed to be a 12 and the other an 18. On each, the second digit was just a tiny smudge.

"NMLA is not responsible for lost, stolen or misdirected tickets," reads a disclaimer on the back of the ticket. "Liability for void, altered or misprinted tickets or disputes, if any, is limited to the refund of the retail sales price."

Wines called the state lottery, where officials offered him $100 worth of free tickets, but flatly refused to pay out what Wines sought.

..."I woke up the other morning, and she said, 'What's wrong?'" Wines recalled. "I said, 'I just can't stop thinking about that lottery ticket.'

"She told me to forget it," he said. "She said they're never going to pay me."