NORFOLK, Va. - The Virginia ABC announced Friday the results of its latest lottery will be delayed in order to implement a new process for selecting winners.
Last month, ABC said two people won four separate lotteries to win sought-after bottles of bourbon.
The results, nearly statistically impossible, led to many questions.
ABC blamed the results on a sorting issue with data into software.
Now, they're updating how lotteries are done with more layers of oversight to make sure things run smoothly.
Implementing that will lead to delays in announcing the results of a May lottery, ABC said.
In addition, ABC released documents related to the lottery, including the names of winners dating back to 2020, internal communications, and statements.
The documents "are being released to the public for transparency around our lottery process changes, and to accommodate [Freedom of Information Act] requests," a spokesperson told News 3.
Still, many are questioning ABC's lottery procedures.
Last month's results "definitely kind of screams that something went amiss there," customer Wes Beavers told News 3.
At an ABC Board of Directors meeting last week, ABC officials said the new lottery process will include Google Address validation, as well as a manual review with human eyes.
During a review of the latest lottery, they discovered someone attempted to enter the lottery 241 times with different addresses and emails.
A spokesperson for ABC told News 3 entrants can be rejected if it's found they don't live in Virginia, if there are duplicate entries, if someone attempts to enter multiple entries for the same drawing, and if more than one person living at the same address enters a drawing. ABC is only accepting the first entry from an address.
In addition, winners will have to verify their address when they pick up bottles with a photo ID. Customers can ask ABC to review this process, the spokesperson said.
"I think they've made a lot of changes over the years and I think they had good intentions and the execution has just been horrible," said Beavers, who regularly enters lotteries.
To add to the confusion, ABC released the names of a lottery from 2022 in response to a request from the Freedom of Information Act.
The document showed most of the winners had names starting with the letter "A."
ABC later backtracked and said the response was incorrect and the lottery was actually done correctly.
