Lotto Max Employees Warned About Talking About $50 Million Lottery Mystery

The BC Lottery Corporation has warned Lotto Max employees about discussing the controversial $50 million lottery mystery in public.

InCanada gambling news , the BC Lottery Corporation (BCLC) president Jim Lightbody has issued a statement to employees asking them to uphold strict confidentiality standards regarding the Lotto Max lottery mystery. It requires them to “be mindful of where conversations are occurring (stay away from discussing this matter in public locations such as the parkade or local coffee shops),” as well as to “share information only on a ‘need-to-know’ basis.”

It is another bizarre installment in the ongoing case of the $50 million lottery mystery. The draw for the prize had taken place on 14 March 2014, with the supposed winner only coming forward to claim the prize on 9 March 2015, nearly a year after the announcement. The BCLC announced that it’d be launching an investigation to verify the winner, but have remained suspiciously mum since.

When Canadian media giant CBC asked for copies of reports, the BCLC withheld 275 pages of records. They argued that disclosing information would reveal legal and policy advice as well as would harm investigative techniques, personal privacy, and intergovernmental relations. They also noted that no more information—including the identity of the claimant—would be released until the investigation was finished.

Could the lottery mystery winner be a BCLC employee?

Who’s the big winner? (Photo: National Post)

In addition to their unusual complete withholding of investigative information, online gambling sites in Canada are finding it suspicious that the BCLC has suggested that the $50 million lottery mystery winner will remain anonymous, as it is one of the conditions of claiming a Lotto Max prize is the consent to release your name and photograph. While there are rare cases in which anonymity is granted to winners—such as undercover policemen—many think that the identity of the winner is being hidden because they are a BCLC employee.

It is a valid hypothesis, as the province has been actively investigating concerns that lottery retailers claim too many prizes since 2007. In addition, lottery employees who win have historically been given exemptions that everymen wouldn’t be, such as the time when a “BCLC retailer was paid a prize of more than $1 million even though she could not identify the correct date of the purchase.”