By Michael Hill
Correspondent
Willie Hawkins could be rich and not even know it.
“I threw my tickets away because nothing could be seen. I threw it the garbage. I’d better go through the garbage and see what happened,” the Newark resident said.
Hawkins is among the frustrated customers who couldn’t check or buy some lottery tickets from Friday to mid-day Monday at Welsh Farms Food Store in Newark and some of the 7,200 retailers across the state.
“I couldn’t play them. I couldn’t play anything. So I had to do without playing them,” said Marva Manns.
In a statement, the New Jersey Treasury Department says, “Lottery’s support teams worked overnight to assist retailers. As of right now, 7,006 Lottery retailers — out of 7,200 total throughout the state — are fully operational. About 80 technicians are currently in the field to individually assist the remaining 194 retailers.”
The state says, “On Friday evening, Lottery performed a scheduled system upgrade of retailer printer terminals. However, a technical issue affected nearly half the retailers statewide, preventing some from selling draw games.”
The glitch stopped the sales of Pick 3, Pick 4, Jersey Cash 5 and Cash4Life tickets. But one store says it was actually worse than that because when the computer goes down they can’t sell Mega Millions or Powerball tickets. It tried to find out over the weekend by calling the state’s toll-free number as to what was going on but it spent the weekend telling customers it simply didn’t know why they couldn’t buy lottery tickets.
“They just said that the machines were down and they weren’t sure why. They didn’t know how long because they couldn’t get through to talk to anybody,” Manns said.
The state denies what Manns says she found out went wrong: Lottery was trying to add a new game to old machines.
“Some of the machines are antiquated. They weren’t up to date yet and they didn’t bother to tell the people in the stores what they were doing,” Manns said.
Walter Jacobs advocates for seniors in Essex County.
“A lot of them live for the New Jersey lottery. For them not to be told what’s going on I think is a slap in the face,” he said.
The lottery advertises “give your dreams a chance” but some retailers and players say this weekend’s experience made that slogan a nightmare.