Tabloid Atones For Jackpot Booboo

Determined to make amends to its readers over a printing mistake in one of the winning numbers in its promotional Scratch n' Match game, a New York tabloid newspaper announced a special drawing with $1 million in cash prizes for those who thought they'd won based on the incorrect numbers.

In its Tuesday edition, the New York Daily News said: "It's way above what the Scratch n' Match rules say we have to do – but we are determined to show you how sorry we are."

In the game for Saturday, 13 was printed in the place of the correct number, 12, in the list of scratch-off numbers.

D.L. Blair, the agency that runs the contest, claimed responsibility for the error that left many people believing they had won prizes up to $100,000.

"We're embarrassed," the company's chairman, Thomas Conlon, said. "I'm infuriated that we made a mistake."

He blamed the mistake on a worker who punched the wrong number into a computer.

The misprint led hundreds of players to show up at the paper's midtown Manhattan offices Monday demanding their winnings.

Shuntang Burton, a mother of six, drove two hours from Middletown to Manhattan to claim her $100,000 prize. Burton said if she doesn't get her money, she's going to court.

Monica Braggs, a Harlem catering company owner, said she had to cancel the trip to Disney World she booked for her family, including her 11-year-old grandson.

"I went to bed $100,000 richer, and it was taken away just like that," Braggs, who thought she'd won $100,000, told the New York Post, which lambasted its rival in a full-page spread.

Vanessa Dover, of Queens, also thought she had won $100,000. She said her family was celebrating Saturday night, but the next morning their dream was dead.

In an article in Tuesday's paper, the Daily News instructed anyone who scratched off the wrong numbers to submit a claim to the agency by July 8 to be eligible for the special drawing.

"We think that by offering this special cash drawing for all the disappointed claimants that we have gone some way toward rectifying the situation," Daily News President and Chief Operating Officer Less Goodstein said Monday night.

Meanwhile, the newspaper has ordered an independent investigation into how the mistake happened.