For many poor Vietnamese people selling lottery tickets is the only way to make a living. They choose this job over the socially detested act of begging, as Huong, a single mother and lottery ticket seller in Saigon explains to RFA’s Lao service. On a good day she sells 250 tickets and makes a daily profit of about 11 US-Dollars. Her husband Manh accompanies her for the 16-hour shift.
Lottery officials in communist Laos are rigging the system, manipulating winning numbers to avoid large pay-outs, sources say. Drawings are frequently shown to show numbers that vanish from purchased tickets or that are deemed unlucky and unlikely to be chosen, the sources tell RFA’s Lao Service. For example, on Oct. 14 this year the winning number 509 appeared only on some purchased tickets, but not others, a source told RFA. It then reappeared only 10 minutes before the drawing.
New Zealand Lottery
In New Zealand, the national lottery is controlled by the Government through an autonomous Crown entity, Lotto New Zealand, which distributes its profits to a variety of community organizations and sporting and cultural bodies, including Sport and Recreation New Zealand, Creative New Zealand, and the New Zealand Film Commission. It also administers the Lotto, Keno, Instant Kiwi scratch card games and a range of online lotteries.
The national lottery of Canada operates four nationwide games: Lotto 6/49, Lotto Max (which replaced Lotto Super 7 in September 2009), Daily Grand and Millionaire Life. The Interprovincial Lottery Corporation is owned by the Atlantic Lottery Corporation (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador), Loto-Quebec (Quebec), Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (Ontario) and Western Canada Lottery Corporation (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut).
Despite being illegal in most countries to offer lottery-style games over the Internet, several websites have emerged to allow people to play for real money. These sites often charge a premium over the base lottery price. One of the biggest is GTech Corporation, which manages 70% of the world’s online and instant lottery business. The company’s headquarters are in West Greenwich, Rhode Island. Many of these companies’ business practices are similar to those used by online gambling sites, but have not yet been subject to public scrutiny. Some governments are considering changing these practices to protect consumers from unfair competition and fraud. Others are seeking ways to prevent these businesses from operating without a license.