Web site offers Powerball tickets

Carol Ann Riha

Thursday, March 2, 2000 | 10:37 a.m.

DES MOINES, Iowa - A new Web site invites anyone in the world to play Powerball - the largest lottery game in the United States - for free.

FreeStateLotto.com, based in Boston, Mass., is a direct marketing site. Users register with the site and then are linked to an advertiser's homepage, becoming eligible for "a chance to win" when they click on the site.

"It is a pure pay for performance model," Beth Lindstrom, chief executive of FreeStateLotto.com, said in a statement Wednesday.

But the player doesn't get a free Powerball ticket.

Instead, the player is assigned a set of numbers by e-mail, according to the Web site's terms and conditions. The prize - if won - is split among all players assigned those same numbers, and the Web site doesn't say how many that could be.

In addition, the company may reserve the right to retain up to 20 percent of all winnings, the Web site says.

The site doesn't sell tickets but gives them away, and that makes it legal, said Charles Strutt, executive director of the Multi-State Lottery Association, the Iowa-based consortium of 21 state lotteries that operates the Powerball game.

"If there's no exchange of consideration, then it's not gambling," he said.

He noted that Lindstrom, the company's CEO, is the former director of the Massachusetts State Lottery and is familiar with the nation's gambling laws.

"There is nothing to prevent someone from giving away lottery tickets, which appears to be what this site is doing," said Mary Neubauer, spokeswoman for the Iowa Lottery. "It is illegal for someone other than a licensed retailer for a state lottery to sell Powerball tickets."

Neubauer said another Web site based in North Carolina was selling tickets this week for $5 each. Tickets sold by licensed retailers are just $1 a pop.

"People had to click a credit card number on the screen," Neubauer said. "It's illegal for someone to do that because they're not a licensed dealer for a state lottery."

Such Web sites tend to "disappear as state agencies get after them," Strutt said. "There are a number of sites out there that sell tickets, just as there are people who rob banks.

"We'll be talking to the federal attorney general's office and the state attorney general's office about the violation of state and federal laws," he said.

Strutt advised people to be wary of Internet sites selling Powerball tickets.

"I don't know if I'd give my credit card number to someone who's obviously violating the law," he said.

Powerball offers the world's largest jackpots. Wednesday night marked the seventh time the Powerball jackpot had topped $100 million. There was no winner and the jackpot will increase to an estimated $140 million Saturday.