The San Francisco call., 1897-06-02
HOW THE TICKETS
ARE PRINTED
Further Expose of the
Great Lottery Fake
Game.
Little Tricks b. Which the
Little Tricks b. Which the
Buyer May Be Hoodwinked
If He Win.
Obi ct.Lesson TO Show That ths Way
of the Transgressor Is Hard,
Indeed.

The expose in last Sundays issue ol
THE CALL of the lottery swindles in this
Ciiy was the subject of much comment
yesterday and the day before. Credulous
persons who had been buying lottery
tickets for years and years, and who were
away behind in the game, had their eyes
opened to the fact that they had been
made the dupes of designing men, and
that they had not one chance in a million
to win prize that would be worth going
after.
" On all sides surprise is expressed that
the two lottery tirE5s of this City should
be permitted by the heads ofthe Police
Department and the Police Com missioners
to transact their business openly so
openly. in fact, ss to have public offices
and to advertise in the daily newspapers,
not only the lottery drawings, but the
places where winning tickets may be
cashed. The CALL is the exception, for it
refuses 10 publish them for love or money.
This surprise is all the greater when it is
known that the Grand Jury meets once
every year, and that it fails to indict the
mem bers, or at least the advertised mem.
bers, of the lottery firms.
The dealers and ticket peddlers have
been working hard to lessen the force of
the expose. Tney are putting forth the
claim that the fifty tickets, each bearing
the mum ber of the winner of the prize oi
$3.50, were counIerfeits, and also that the
800 capital prize tickets presented for pay
ment on May 8 were counteTfeited. 1t is
strange that a counterfeiter in range cf
$4,000 or 100000 numbers should print sou
tickets with the same mum Der and that
that number should turn out to be the
winner OF the capi al prize. If each num-
ber in the series were printed 500 times
there would be in the Mexican lottery
scheme 40,000,000 valued at $40 OOO, 600
printed in San Fran cisco alone. or 81, ,000,-
600 tickets, valued at $12, 500 600, in the
Honduras or Little Louisiana scheme.
This is preposterous on its face. The
more reasonable explanation is that of the
S0,O OCO Mexican tickets only about 1000
mum bers are printed, thus giving the
schem rs leverage OF IS, 600 numbers on
which they will not have to pay any
prizes. These 2000 mum bers duplicated
and reduplicated to tit the demand are
divided among the numerous peddlers of
tickets so that no one of them will have
a duplicate. Thus each peddler could be
given 1000 tickets, each ticket with diff
ferent mum ber, and yet these would be all
the mum oers represented out of the whole
$4,000. Only the winning tickets would
COhRC W ilkAls duu NubplCAOA COulu Oe III
layed by cashing few of the smaller prizes
Any duplicate numbers brought in tor the
same prizes could be stampe counter
felt" and laid TO the credit of the bold, bad
forger.
Another REGULAR fact connected with
the lottery swindle is that the purchaser
is poweTless to detect counterfeit, which
difficulty arises probably from the reason
that there is no counterfeit. Proof of this
proposition is furnished by the list of win
ming numbers sent to their patrons by the
lottery agencies of this City. This circu-
lar gives the name of one OF the COM
panies as "Thc Original Little Beneticen-
cia Publica Company of San Francisco" p"
Then few lines farther on the public is
warned to beware of limitations and to see
that every ticket bears the name of 1.-The
Original Little Benelicencia Company, -
leaving out the word "publica, yet the
word "publica" appears on all the tickets
of those admitted to be genuine (non-
prze-winners) and those alleged to be
counterfeit (prize- winners).
Another peculiar Circumstance is that
the word 'tbene ficencia'' is spelled "benif-
cencia" on all the tickets admittedly gen.
uine as well as those claimed to be coun-
terfeited. This bad spelling appears on
the tickets OF one of the companies, while
the word is spelled properly on the tickets
of the other g.
Here is another striking popularity in
the case of two tickets bought from the
same peddler at the same tJme: - :. =.