Instant Win Scratchies pay big for Unlucky Italian

Did you ever have such a bad run of luck that you wanted to sue the pants off a gambling operator for having an unfair advantage? If scracth cards are your favorite pastime, you probably know that feeling. But we all know that’s not an option. Or is it?

Apparently that’s not the case in Italy, where one player of instant win scratchies lost repeatedly on every card he purchased. But thanks to a legal technicality, he got it all back in one fell swoop.

Thus was the story that emerged in Il Meesagero this week after a 29 year old male from Salerno turned a terrible streak of bad luck into one, big payout. According to reports, the unlucky man had spent €3,000 on 255 scratch cards over the course of a year, without a single winner in the mix.

Frustrated beyond all expletive terminology, the man consigned the help of Attorney Paolo Siniscalo. The two promptly filed a lawsuit against Lottomatica, the National Lottery of Italy. It wasn’t long before his dreadful luck on the instant win scratchies turned a full 180 degrees – the winds of fortune finally blowing his way.

The case was heard in the local court of Vallo della Lucania, where the Justice of the Peace ordered Lottomatica to pay the man back every bit of the money he had spent on the losing scratch cards. The decision wasn’t based on sympathy for the unfortunate gambler, but rather a detrimental technicality in the production of the lottery tickets themselves.

“The tickets, bought from the State Lottery, bore no indication of the probability of winning or a warning about the risk of dependence on gambling games with cash prizes,” said the Justice of the Peace in his official ruling.

In Italy, as well as most regions of the world, instant win scratchies must bear this information, or – at the least – provide a source from which to obtain such information. That stipulation was decreed in a previous ruling, in which the courts ordered all lottery tickets to provide warning labels pertaining to the odds of winning, as well as the risk of addiction.

Noting the minimal size of Italy’s scratch cards, it was decided that if there wasn’t enough room to fit the game’s probabilities and warnings on the back of each card, Lottomatica must provide a link on the back directing players to a website where that information could be found.

While the National Lottery succeeded in replacing the majority of their scratch cards with new ones that bear the appropriate text, not all of them were replaced, including the 255 tickets that the 29 year old plaintiff purchased – and lost on – over the course of that year.

This wasn’t the first rodeo for the young man’s attorney, Mr. Siniscalo, either. He told Adnkronos that he’s dealt in previous cases of similar nature, winning refunds for unlucky lottery players. He said that, even in situations where it’s only two or three non-winning scratch cards, there’s a legitimate case to be made.

According to Studio Cataldi, an Italian legal magazine, there are still some instant win scratchies in circulation that don’t contain the proper odds and warning labels.