A newspaper reports that the Illinois Lottery didn't prevent a private company running its scratch-off games from pulling the games before all tickets were sold and the prizes were awarded.
The Chicago Tribune reports that former Illinois Lottery Director Michael Jones says he relied on the Northstar Lottery Group to manage the lottery and that the state lottery's contract with Northstar left lottery officials with little choice but to watch the company stop selling popular scratch-off games.
Northstar says the state approved the way it ran the games and that they were run fairly.
The article follows a Tribune report last month that the lottery collected hundreds of millions of dollars in instant ticket sales for years but didn't pay out many cash grand prizes.
