Akash Sama­roo

De­spite an apol­o­gy from Trinidad and To­ba­go Tele­vi­sion Lim­it­ed (TT­TL) for what it’s call­ing a “ma­chine er­ror” which af­fect­ed Tues­day’s 4 pm Play Whe draw, gam­ing op­er­a­tors still be­lieve what tran­spired was “sus­pi­cious.”

Dur­ing the live TTT broad­cast on that day, the full re­sults for the Mega Ball draw were dis­played on-screen even though the draw had just be­gun.

The graph­ic on-screen showed that there would be two white balls and then one red ball, al­though on­ly one white ball was drawn at the time. The graph­ic was tak­en down quick­ly and the fol­low­ing draws sub­se­quent­ly yield­ed the same re­sult that was put up pre­vi­ous­ly on-screen.

In a let­ter ad­dressed to the Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board (NL­CB) chair­man Eu­stace Nan­cis, On­line Gam­ing Agents As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (OGAATT) pres­i­dent Dean Per­sad said, “This has caused an up­roar, doubts, sus­pi­cions and ques­tions on the in­tegri­ty of the game and the draw. You will agree that these sen­ti­ments are jus­ti­fied and need to be ad­dressed.”

Per­sad said they de­served an ex­pla­na­tion and that this had brought in­to fo­cus, “many ques­tions that sur­round er­rors in week­ly set­tle­ments and de­posits.”

When Guardian Me­dia reached out to Nan­cis, he said ques­tions were best di­rect­ed to TTT, the ser­vice provider for the Play Whe draws. Nan­cis said he did, how­ev­er, re­quest a re­port from TTT and from the NL­CB on the mat­ter.

Guardian Me­dia in­formed Nan­cis that there was spec­u­la­tion in the pub­lic do­main, par­tic­u­lar­ly on so­cial me­dia, that what tran­spired on Tues­day was con­fir­ma­tion that the draws were be­ing ma­nip­u­lat­ed.

“The in­tegri­ty is in­tact,” Nan­cis re­spond­ed, adding: “I think it’s a hu­man er­ror by the ser­vice provider.”

Nan­cis ex­plained that there were some­times pre-draw tri­als. But he stressed that what was broad­cast on tele­vi­sion was a live event.

“Any mis­take made pri­or and goes on air, it could be a prob­lem, some­times they may have pre-draw tri­als but it’s live and I’m just wait­ing for the re­port,” he said.

Fol­low­ing that in­ter­view, Nan­cis, via What­sApp, for­ward­ed a mes­sage he re­ceived from TTT stat­ing: “TTT Lim­it­ed (TT­TL) would like to ad­vise the pub­lic that on No­vem­ber 15, 2022, a ma­chine er­ror at TT­TL af­fect­ed the 4 pm Play Whe Draw # 22596. This was a TT­TL er­ror and does not af­fect the in­tegri­ty of the NL­CB draw. TT­TL takes this op­por­tu­ni­ty to apol­o­gise to the NL­CB and the gam­ing pub­lic and has tak­en all ac­tions to pre­vent any re­cur­rence of such event.”

But that still does not clear­ly ex­plain how what was dis­played quick­ly on the screen, was ex­act­ly what played out at the end of the draw.

Guardian Me­dia again con­tact­ed Nan­cis, who said, “I my­self am try­ing to in­ves­ti­gate how it played out.”

Nan­cis said he ex­pressed to TTT the same con­cerns that Guardian Me­dia had. How­ev­er, he in­sist­ed it was not the fault of the NL­CB and that he was await­ing more in­for­ma­tion from TTT and the NL­CB’s in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

But Per­sad be­lieves the NL­CB is cov­er­ing up some­thing sin­is­ter.

“It’s con­ve­nient for them to blame a TTT ma­chine now, but when we tell them that the NL­CB ma­chines are faulty and giv­ing out wrong set­tle­ment fig­ures they are adamant is not the ma­chine but the op­er­a­tor tak­ing the funds,” Per­sad said.

At­tempts to con­tact TTT CEO David Roberts were un­suc­cess­ful, as he did not an­swer calls.