Author: Samuel Ansah Boateng
In their quest to clamp down on illegal lotto operators, and to protect the interest of lotto lovers, the National Lottery Authority, NLA, has cautioned the general public to halt businesses with unlicensed lotto operators, such as Porsche Lotteries among others; to avoid possible situations of illegal operators fleecing subscribers’ huge sums of monies.
Aftermath this paper’s expose’ on how Porsche Lotteries, whose office is at Lapaz, Ablekuma, and other areas in Accra, ‘dribbled’ about eleven lotto operators of over one million cedis, the NLA says in such situations, it becomes difficult for them to compel the operator to pay the draw winners, ‘’because we have not licensed them. We will get whoever is involved arrested and prosecuted, but if the operator were to be licensed, we could have just asked the operator to pay’’.
Readers will recall from our Tuesday’s front page story, on 30th May, captioned ‘’Illegal Lotto Operator Dribbles Draw Winners…Over 1 Million Cedis Win’’, where about 17 lotto writers who worked as a group staked an amount of Four Thousand, One Hundred and Two cedis (GHS4,102.00) with Porsche Lotto, with an expected return of One Million and Seventy-seven Thousand, Six Hundred Ghana Cedis (1,077,600.00).
According to the group, their stakes were successful, and in their excitement, thronged the premises of Porsche Lotteries to redeem their monies. To their shock, they were informed by Porsche’s management that although their stakes were successful, they were not in the position to pay them.
This paper gathered that although their Lapaz branch Manager confirmed the win of the 17 lotto writers, top management of Porsche Lotteries quickly sacked him, claiming he had conspired with the subscribers.
However, Goodfellow Dei Offei, Public Relations Officer of the National Lottery Authority has reiterated their commitment to ensure sanity prevailed, ‘’NLA, in collaboration with security agencies will undertake exercises to clamp down on all unlicensed and illegal lotto operators.
All illegal operators arrested during these exercises will be made to face the full rigors of the law. Persons and entities which are yet to obtain or renew their licenses may contact the NLA to go through the licensing processes’’.
More anon.
