The ticket that was not a winner

The Mishawaka test: This section tested Mishawaka against the three forms of the not-a-winner — disputed, unclaimed and expired — on the Hoosier Lottery's winner and unclaimed records and the press of record. The local test case is the Golo Food Mart million of February 8, 2022, carried whole above: a documented $1 million sale with no published claimant and a 180-day window that closed in August 2022, its outcome — claimed silently or expired unclaimed — unpublished in every source reached, with the Lottery's claim record for that drawing named as the settling source. No Mishawaka winner litigation, no disputed Mishawaka ticket, and no Lottery announcement of an expired Mishawaka prize appears in the record reached beyond that open case. The test is printed at that result.

The statewide dispute that reached this city's air, whole and at its true size: The one modern not-a-winner controversy documented at size in Indiana is not a Mishawaka player's, and it is printed here as the state frame it is. The $5 Space Invaders Cash Invasion Scratch-off, game #2624, launched June 2, 2026; within a day the Hoosier Lottery halted its sales — June 3, 2026 — over what it called a technical issue: a printing error in which some tickets appeared to show a prize different from the prize recorded in the Lottery's official validation record, and a scratch-off's prize is fixed by the validation record, not by the symbols in the play area. Players came forward with tickets that appeared to show $100,000 — among them Mike Fields, whose ticket validated at $20, and Tyson Enochs, who told ABC57, the South Bend-market ABC affiliate, that he had bought more than twenty of the tickets and scratched one that appeared to show $100,000 — and with apparent prizes of $2,500 and less. The Lottery directed affected players to a Space Invaders Protest Form, ticket to be mailed in by November 30, 2026. Its resolution, announced in September 2026 and carried on the Lottery's own contact page as updated August 18, 2026, found 252 tickets affected by the printing error and offered consolation payments by the amount the misprinted ticket had appeared to show: $10–$499 paid $25; $500–$2,499 paid $100; $2,500–$5,999 paid $500; and apparent amounts of $100,000 and more paid $10,000. The game was relaunched in a corrected edition, #2666, which remains on sale and to which the protest process does not apply, in the Lottery's words: “The Hoosier Lottery remains committed to paying all valid tickets.” No Mishawaka buyer of a #2624 ticket is named in any account reached, and none is claimed; the episode stands in this section because ABC57 carried it to this city's audience, because Mishawaka retailers sold the game for the day it lived, and because it is the documented answer, in the present state of the record as of November 2026, to what Indiana does when a ticket says it won and the record says it did not.

The 2004 case, at pointer size: The other disputed-prize form — a real winner obtained by fraud — is Mishawaka's own only by its innocent half, and stands whole in the rigged-game article above: a Lottery that delayed payment, polygraphed its own security staff and sought recovery of the $25,000 payments made on the Cross Plains ticket. It is not retold here.

Sources:

1. Hoosier Lottery news release (February 9, 2022) and claim rules — the Golo test case, as carried whole in the Golo article above.
2. Hoosier Lottery statements and contact-page notice (June–August 2026), as published in November 2026 — game #2624 launched June 2, 2026, sales halted for a printing error, the Protest Form and November 30, 2026 deadline, the resolution and the corrected game #2666.
3. Lottery Post (September 7, 2026), “Hoosier Lottery offers cash payouts for misprinted 'Space Invaders' scratch-off tickets” — 252 affected tickets and the consolation-payment tiers as stated, reporting Fox59.
4. ABC57 reporting (June 2026), as carried in the South Bend companion leg and in ScratchCheck's account — Tyson Enochs and the apparent $100,000 ticket; People and Nexstar (June 2026) — Mike Fields, the $100,000 appearance and the $20 validation, and Glendon Jones's apparent $2,500.