By Ted Sickinger, oregonlive.comPORTLAND, Ore. -- While Mike Platzer can’t compete with the Oregon Lottery’s biggest jackpot winners, in one sense, he seems the luckiest of them all.
But lottery officials in New York, New Jersey and Washington told The Oregonian/OregonLive that international purchases of tickets through third party services are not allowed in their lottery drawings. Mega Millions has specifically banned the practice, and sent a warning letter to Oregon after an official in Quebec complained about the sale of those tickets to customers in Canada.
The Lottery Office sells tickets not to American lotteries but instead to its “proprietary” lotteries in Australia, in these cases called the USA Power Lotto and USA Mega Lotto. The company then purchases matching tickets in the Powerball and Mega Millions lotteries at The Pit Stop, effectively insuring the ticket.
Matt Shelby, a spokesperson for the Oregon Lottery, said international sales of tickets through such services is a gray area. He said the agency believes it’s operating within the rules, but is open to guidance from the Legislature, voters or the multi-state consortia that operate Mega Millions and Powerball.“There’s nothing in statute saying not to do it,” he said in an interview. “There’s also nothing specifically enabling it. We would welcome additional guidance in this area.
Oregon paid the prize. He had to come to America to claim it, and Oregon Lottery officials took the unusual step of not publicly naming him, saying it could put him at risk when he returned home. While Oregon has welcomed couriers with open arms, some states, like Washington, don’t allow courier sales at all. Kristi Weeks, director of legal services for the Washington Lottery, said the agency isn’t ethically or morally opposed to couriers, they just don’t fly under the state’s gaming laws.“It’s my understanding that sales outside the United States of Powerball or Mega Millions is a violation of game rules,” she said.
That state goes even further. It requires courier services to submit daily reports for each game they sell, showing every ticket purchased, for which customer, and the location of the customer at the time of purchase. One other perk that may help explain why Oregon is a draw for international companies: Oregon pays an 8% commission to retailers on lottery sales, more than many other states.California vendors, for instance, make between 4.5% and 6% on ticket sales, while Florida and Texas sellers get 5%. Oregon’s higher rate may facilitate a back-end split between the retailer and the courier on the large volume of sales they generate.
Oregon’s other three top retailers for Mega Millions and Powerball work in partnership with couriers or lottery agents, and generate millions in sales each year. They include two other Portland bars – Produce Row and The Independent Sports Bar & Grill – owned by the same restaurant group, as well as Winners Corner, a gaming shop in Northeast Portland.
Stanford said Produce Row has lottery terminals dedicated to high-volume customers in a separate annex of the building. The process is much the same as going to a convenience store, but in this case it is a group of employees from the bar and the courier service sitting in a room, watching TV, listening to music and printing lottery tickets and other needed paperwork en masse.