TORONTO - Police will announce new charges Wednesday stemming from an insider win scandal at the troubled Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp.
Provincial police Commissioner Chris Lewis will be on hand to talk about what police are calling a "high-profile" investigation involving fraudulent claims of a major Ontario lottery prize.
Police wouldn't go into details, but say the charges stem from a different investigation than the one they undertook in 2007.
That probe resulted in a former convenience store owner being charged with stealing a winning lottery ticket and fraudulently claiming $5.7 million in prize money. The owner, Hafiz Malik, was sentenced in June to one year in jail.
OLG chairman Paul Godfrey is also expected to answer questions about the investigation following the OPP news conference in Toronto's west end.
The Ontario government called in the police three years ago after the province's ombudsman accused unscrupulous lottery-ticket retailers of collecting tens of millions of dollars in "dishonest" winnings -- and the responsible Crown agency of letting them get away with it.
OLG, which rakes in about $6.5 billion in revenues a year, has been plagued with problems ranging from questionable expenses to botched scratch-and-win tickets, malfunctioning slot machines, lawsuits from gambling addicts, and a controversial casino power plant that ended up costing taxpayers $80 million.
