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TaipeiBank executives enter damage-control mode

TaipeiBank (台北銀行) officials say the next issue of scratch-off instant lottery tickets will have larger jackpots to rekindle public interest after reports surfaced of an individual who had deciphered the code to identify winning tickets.

Officials at the bank, which administers the lottery for the government, suspect that someone with a computer engineering background taught others how to find winning tickets. But they have yet to locate the person.

Some lottery players learned how to win prizes of up to NT$1,000 by decoding the black and white algorithm of barcodes on the backs of tickets, said bank vice president Richard Yang (楊瑞東).

Someone studied the pattern ``until he found a connection,'' he said.

The tickets are distributed by Lottery Technology Services Corp (樂彩公司), a partnership between Acer Inc (宏電) and the world's largest lottery-systems operator, Gtech. The code-breaking incident spurred US-based Gtech to warn lotteries worldwide on Wednesday of possible infiltration and has forced Taiwan's government to recall 8.3 million tickets.

The company said the tickets were recalled "in response to concerns about potential operational and technical issues related to instant ticket games."

A vendor alerted Taipeibank to the problem a week ago, Yang said.

Auto mechanic Chen Shen-chang twice visited a lottery retailing shop in the central Taiwanese city of Taichung asking to compare bar codes on tickets with markings he had in a notebook.

Chen has become a local media celebrity, but he denies he cracked the code on his own. Chen says a friend taught him but has refused to name him.

"I'd be so happy if he was the one who broke the code," Chen's mother told the mass-circulation China Times.

Taipeibank officials have said that those who tried to crack the code were only able to win up to NT$1,000. The lottery tickets sell for NT$100 apiece and have a grand prize of NT$1 million.

It's unlikely the bank will press any charges because the players haven't broken any laws and no one has reaped large prizes from the code-breaking technique, Yang said.

It will cost Taipeibank about NT$8 million (US$231,200) to replace the recalled tickets, Yang added.

Taiwan's Finance Ministry has demanded that the bank change its codes more frequently to keep the incident from recurring.
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