Lottery ticket holders suspect 'black box' deceit after on-air drawing is canceled at last minute

By Tongfei Zhang, January 27, 2015

On January 25, the live on-air drawing of China Welfare Lottery's winning numbers on China Education Channel was abruptly cut from the airwaves with no prior warning and replaced with a stream of advertisements.

15 minutes later, the Lotto China posted an “emergency notice” on Weibo stating that this week’s lottery would not be able to run on time due to a "data communication error," and that they would reveal the winner of the RMB500 million prize once the issue was resolved.

Then, at 11:39pm - two hours after the it was scheduled - the lottery website announced the winning number alongside an introduction of the winner: a 20-year-old migrant worker in Guangzhou who had clung persistently to these winning numbers for more than six months.

On the next day, the Deputy Director of the Ministry of Civil Affairs apologized to all ticket-buyers and explained that the incident occurred due to "data anomalies" in Chongqing's lottery sales system that arose while they were conducting nationwide data collection.

Netizens however, did not buy this, and have been fuming online and theorizing who was truly behind the grand deceit. Commentators continued to accuse the lottery commission of "black box operations" and one web user even reported the issue to the the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.

“I expect a fair inspection on the fairness of China Welfare Lottery's management center,” he said.