South Carolina Lottery Christmas Winners Won't Get Prizes 
 
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 For two glorious hours it was the gift that kept on giving. And on Christmas Day no less. 
 
 Between 5:51 p.m. and 7:53 p.m. last December, South Carolinians playing the state lottery were treated to tens of thousands of winning Holiday Cash Add-A-Play tickets, each worth up to $500 regardless of the holder's good or bad behavior. 
 
 It was an improbable lucky streak that was, in fact, too good to be true. And on Wednesday, the South Carolina Education Lottery announced it will not be delivering more than $30 million in prizes to players who bought tickets during the brief window "because they had been produced in error." 
 
 A computer glitch was behind the fortuitous — or unfortunate — anomaly, depending on what side you're on, that caused gas stations and convenience stores to issue about 71,000 winning plays. 
 
 The objective of the tic-tac-toe-like game was to line up three Christmas trees in any direction — horizontal, vertical or diagonal — for a cash prize ranging from $2 to $500. But lottery officials said a five-month analysis of the incident "revealed coding errors" leading machines to repeatedly print tickets depicting nine tree symbols resulting in the biggest prize. 
 
 The South Carolina Education Lottery blamed its former computer gaming vendor, Intralot. The state lottery said the Greece-based company failed to run adequate quality assurance testing prior to deploying the game. 
 
 "Regrettably, these errors by the former vendor led loyal players to mistakenly believe that they held winning tickets," the South Carolina Education Lottery said in a statement. 
 
 "This is a very unusual and specific situation because it has to do with the nature of the game," an Intralot representative told NPR, adding that he could not go into further detail. 
 
 The official noted the company's quick response time to the mistake. "We all became aware of the problem within hours," he said. "We were able to identify that there was unusual behavior very quickly and we followed the correct procedure to shut it down." 
 
 "We think it was a pretty good response," he said. 
 
 Winners-in-waiting have been holding out hope that the lottery board of commissioners would decide to honor the prize value of the tickets. But after an hours-long meeting Wednesday the commissioners ruled players would be reimbursed only for the cost of each lottery ticket: $1 for each claim that is mailed in. 
 
 "This was not a lottery discretionary matter," Tim Madden, one of the lottery's attorneys told FOX Carolina. "Once this board decided that these tickets were issued, produced or printed in error, then state law mandates that no prize shall be paid." 
 
 Holli Armstrong, a spokeswoman for the South Carolina Education Lottery, told NPR the cost of the error-filled tickets would have totaled approximately $35 million. But in light of the board's decision, the lottery is out about $1.7 million — the sum players were able to cash-in before the mistake was discovered on Christmas Day. 
 
 That leaves scores of unhappy people who feel they're entitled to the full cash prize. 
 
 "It's not fair," Nicole Coggins complained to The New York Times. "It's not right." Coggins was planning on making large purchases with her winnings, including a car and a trip to Disneyland. 
 
 Coggins is part of one of two lawsuits that have so far been filed against the state lottery and Intralot on behalf of people who have been denied prize money, according to the Times. 
 
 The South Carolina Education Lottery reported record ticket sales in the most recent fiscal year (2016 - 2017) totalling $1.64 billion and issued more than $1 billion in prizes. Nearly $5 billion has been allocated to education programs throughout the state since the start of the lottery in 2002. ||||| Officials with the South Carolina Education Lottery said late Tuesday that a programming error caused an issue with Holiday Cash Add-A-Play game. 
 
 The SCEL’s computer system vendor, Intralot, experienced a programming error on Christmas Day that impacted Holiday Cash Add-A-Play tickets, a $1 terminal-generated instant game, officials said in a statement. 
 
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 From 5:51 p.m. to 7:53 p.m., the same play symbol was repeated in all nine available play areas on tickets which would result in a top prize of $500. 
 
 No more than five identical play symbols should appear for a single play. As soon as the issue was identified, the Add-A-Play game was suspended immediately to conduct a thorough investigation. 
 
 Instant (scratch) tickets and all other lottery games were not affected by this error, officials said. 
 
 They went on to say that Holiday Cash Add-A-Play game sales and validations will remain suspended until further notice. All players who purchased a Holiday Cash Add-A-Play ticket on Christmas Day during the time period affected are advised to hold on to their ticket(s) until the review is completed. 
 
 A further announcement will be made at the end of this week, officials said. 
 
 The impact of the programming error 
 
 Imagine getting a lottery ticket for Christmas, and winning. 
 
 
 
 That's what happened to two Upstate women Monday. 
 
 "I was having a good day and I wanted to try it," Nicole Coggins of Liberty told WYFF News 4. 
 
 She said she had a gut feeling. "I don't play the lottery that much. Every once in a while, I'll buy a Powerball ticket, but something told me to buy a lottery ticket," she said. 
 
 Coggins knew she was on to something when she bought a Holiday Cash ticket, and paid an extra dollar to add a play. 
 
 
 
 Players have to get three Christmas trees in any vertical, horizontal or diagonal line in order to win a prize. 
 
 Coggins won. 
 
 "I was happy," she said. "I was excited. I was calling everyone I knew, 'I won $500.'" 
 
 To test her luck, Coggins bought another ticket. 
 
 "And it was another winner and another winner. So I thought, 'Well, maybe there is something wrong with their machine. This can't be real.'" 
 
 She drove to two other gas stations with the same result, so she called her mother-in-law, Shawanna Ladd and suggested she try playing the game. 
 
 Shawanna Ladd and Nicole Coggins explain what happened when their winning SC lottery tickets were deemed invalid. 
 
 "I played $10 first, and I won on every ticket," Ladd said. 
 
 Together they racked up almost $18,000 at different Liberty stores including Marathon, Spinx and Ball Mart. 
 
 But their Christmas miracle turned out to be a sham, when Coggins went to cash in the tickets. The cashier put the tickets into the machine, but only disappointment came out. 
 
 "It told him 'transaction not allowed,' that the game was not valid," Coggins said. 
 
 No one at the stores would talk to WYFF News 4 on camera, but a manager at one store said "it was crazy" on Christmas day, as the word got out about the winning tickets and dozens of people rushed in to buy them. 
 
 He said the frenzy lasted for about an hour, before the machines stopped issuing tickets. 
 
 The "winning" tickets inserted into the lottery machine to confirm the win said that the tickets were invalid, so no money was issued, he said. 
 
 At least one other person called the WYFF News 4 newsroom to report the same situation, and there were published reports of similar invalid sales in the Charleston area. 
 
 The news was heartbreaking for Coggins, who got emotional as she explained that she had already told her kids they were going to take a trip to Disney World. 
 
 "I had been promising them for years and I thought I would finally get to, and now I can't," she said. 
 
 After spending $100 on lottery tickets, Coggins got nothing in return. 
 
 She said Tuesday afternoon that she was still waiting for a response from the South Carolina Education Lottery. 
 
 "We didn't do anything wrong. The stores didn't do anything wrong. It's (the SCEL's) fault. I think they should either honor the tickets or give us our money back," Coggins said. 
 
 Until then, she's not going to let the so-called glitch ruin her Christmas. 
 
 "I'll always have my family and I'm thankful for my family and that's the more important thing in the world," she said. 
 
 The SCEL headquarters in Columbia is closed for the holidays and will reopen Wednesday. ||||| Thousands of lottery players in South Carolina thought Christmas was their lucky day. 
 
 Starting at 5:51 p.m. last Dec. 25, gas stations and convenience stores across the state dispensed a steady stream of what appeared to be winning tickets. 
 
 Some customers caught on to the anomaly and bought as many as they could. Nicole Coggins, 36, of Liberty, S.C., was one of them. 
 
 “We figured we’d buy a reliable vehicle and take the kids to Disneyland,” she said, adding that she and a few other family members kept playing the game until they amassed what they thought were thousands of dollars in winnings. 
 
 But Ms. Coggins was not able to cash in. The state suspended the game after two hours, at 7:53 p.m., and in a statement two days later, the South Carolina Education Lottery said its computer system vendor, Intralot, had experienced a programming error.
– The Christmas miracle that wasn’t. Last year on Christmas Day, lottery dispensers at convenience stores and gas stations across South Carolina started doing something remarkable. For two hours they spewed out winning tickets of up to $500 like candy. Lottery officials quickly figured out the problem, and cashiers began seeing the message, “transaction not allowed,” when customers went to collect their prizes, reports the Washington Post. But before the bonanza was over, 71,000 of the $1 Holiday Cash Add-A-Play tickets had been dispensed, with the errant prize money totaling about $35 million. So, what happens to all the winning tickets that were rejected? They are worth exactly $1, the state lottery board announced on Wednesday. The winners will not get their prize money, but they can get a refund. After a five-month investigation, lottery officials found the problem was caused by coding errors, reports NPR. The officials say Intralot, a Greece-based ticket vendor, did not run proper testing procedures before releasing the game. "While [the state lottery] is mindful of the magnitude of this decision on its players, any other decision would not comply with the law,” officials said, per the New York Times. Players holding winning tickets are not happy. Nicole Coggins, who thought she had won $18,000, has filed a class-action lawsuit against the lottery commission and the vendor, one of two lawsuits that have been filed, according to the Post. “We think it’s a breach of contract if the commission decided to deny them their rightful winnings,” her lawyer says. "It's not fair," Coggins tells the Times. "It's not right."