The Taiwanese Ministry of Finance is cracking down on those who spread out purchases to obtain more receipts to redeem in the country’s receipt lottery after it was discovered that two individuals had won more than 2,000 times in one year.
According to a report in Taiwan News, over 100 people had won the receipt lottery over 64 times in the space of 12 months between November 2019 and October 2020, with the highlight being the two big winners.
In the lottery draws, players have the opportunity to win NT$200 and NT$10m depending on the code written on their receipts.
The National Audit Office discovered that the vast majority of winners had attained large quantities of receipts by spreading out purchases of cheaper items such as NT$1 carrier bags seperately.
As a result of the investigation, the Ministry of Finance has announced that it will no longer pay out prizes to winners who use this method. On top of this, the office said it will track down previous winners using this method and demand the winning funds be returned.
An MoF report concluded that the regulations will change to prevent this type of ‘abnormal transactions and payment methods’ from reoccurring.
