A punter who was jailed for faking a $5 million Mark Six lottery ticket had his conviction overturned on appeal yesterday.
Mr Justice Louis Tong Po-sun, in the Court of First Instance, ruled that the trial magistrate had prematurely excluded the possibility that a faulty vending machine was to blame for problems with the ticket.
Lam Sze-chuen, 26, was sentenced to 11 months in jail last November at Eastern Court after magistrate Henry Mierzak convicted him of using a false instrument. He was released on bail after appealing against the conviction and the sentence.
Mr Lam took the lottery ticket to Jockey Club headquarters on January 12, 1999, claiming he had won the $5,222,060 first prize, but a club supervisor found discrepancies with it.
Mr Mierzak accepted the club's evidence that the discrepancies could not have been caused by the vending machine, which it said was operating properly.
But Mr Justice Tong said the issue of whether there had been a malfunction 'was not sufficiently canvassed' by the magistrate. 'I doubt if the inference of no malfunction of the machine and the system could be readily and safely made in the absence of some direct documentary proof or oral evidence from the person who had actually carried out cleaning work on the date in question,' Mr Justice Tong said.
