What "file a claim" or "see lottery" means when you scan a ticket

The scariest message a lottery terminal can show is also, usually, the best one. "File a claim," "see lottery," "claim at lottery office" and even "not payable" generally mean one thing: the machine is not allowed to pay you, and the most common reason is that you won more than the store's limit.

Retailers in most states can pay prizes up to somewhere around $500 or $600. Anything above that has to go through a lottery office or claim center, partly for tax paperwork and partly for security, so the terminal routes you.

Winners misread it constantly. A Michigan woman scanned her Powerball ticket, got a claim message, and asked the cashier what it meant, thinking she might have won a few thousand dollars. She had actually won $100,000. An 81-year-old in Italy went the other way: a self-service terminal showed "not payable," she thought it meant it was a losing ticket and threw it in the trash bin. She later realized the mistake and garbage workers had to sift 6 tons of waste to recover what turned out to be a $1.16 million winner.

So the rule is simple. Any message you do not understand means keep the ticket and ask, either the clerk, the official state lottery app, or the lottery itself. Sign the back before it leaves your hand, since an unsigned ticket belongs to whoever holds it. And nothing that comes out of a scanner ever makes a ticket worth throwing away, which also applies to old tickets you find later, as long as the game is still within its claim deadline.