VANCOUVER — The B.C. Supreme Court has dismissed the claims of a Maple Ridge man to a $50-million lottery jackpot.
George Wilson-Tagoe, 64, argued that through theft and fraud, the B.C. Lottery Corp. had deprived him of the prize money from the winning Lotto Max ticket on March 14, 2014.
The retired accountant and father of two alleged that he had selected the numbers for himself for the winning ticket, but that he had lost his ticket. He said he remembered the numbers because he played the same numbers every week.
After a 21-month delay, BCLC in December awarded the $50 million to a publicity-shy Langley family.
In rejecting Wilson-Tagoe’s claim to the lottery bonanza, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Affleck noted that the winning ticket was selected from what is known as a quick pick, with potential winning numbers being picked by a computer, rather than through the self-selected numbers of the plaintiff.
“I have no evidence on this application which would allow me to reject as insufficient the careful scrutiny the defendant corporation used to determine the winning ticket,” the judge said in his reasons for judgment.
“The undisputed fact that Mr. Wilson-Tagoe purchased a ticket after self-selecting the numbers he wanted, whereas the winning ticket was a quick pick, in my view is dispositive of this application.”
Wilson-Tagoe also claimed that the winning ticket presented by the Langley family was a fake, but the judge dismissed that argument.
The judge cited an earlier and similar court ruling in which an Ontario judge had found a plaintiff to be an honest and responsible person with a sincere but mistaken belief that the winning ticket was the ticket he or she had lost or misplaced.
“Those words are appropriate for the matter before me,” Affleck said.
The ruling was posted at the court’s website on Monday.
Reached for comment Tuesday, Wilson-Tagoe said that he plans to appeal Affleck’s ruling, arguing that the court hadn’t looked at his evidence. Wilson-Tagoe, a self-represented litigant, said the judge wouldn’t let him address the court at one point.
“The lawyer for BCLC kept hogging the lectern,” he said. “When I tried to point out an error that they were talking about, the judge shut me down. It was the weirdest thing.”
Wilson-Tagoe said that his main grounds of appeal will focus on his claim that when he phoned BCLC initially, an investigator told him that the winning ticket was not a quick pick.
“Now they are saying it’s a quick pick, so basically they are changing their story to fit a narrative,” he said.
Wilson-Tagoe has filed an appeal of Affleck’s ruling at the B.C. Court of Appeal. No date has been set for the appeal.
In an email, a spokesman for BCLC said the corporation conducts a thorough review of all prize claims and confirms the rightful winners before completing the verification process and paying out any prize money.
“BCLC completed the prize-claim verification process and delivered the prize to the rightful owners for the $50-million Lotto Max prize that was won in B.C. on March 14, 2014,” the spokesman said.
“Throughout this process BCLC was guided by maintaining the integrity of the lottery system — which we uphold by ensuring prizes are paid to the right people.”
The corporation said it received 739 inquiries regarding the March 2014 Lotto Max ticket and reviewed every claim.
At least one other lawsuit arose from the March 2014 $50-million jackpot.
That was the case of a Burnaby woman claiming that one of her co-workers had fraudulently obtained the winning ticket. In his response, the co-worker denied the claim. In February, that suit was discontinued.
