Ontario gaming officials spent much of yesterday apologizing after acknowledging a printing error created 1,100 false winning lottery tickets.

It is estimated that 50 to 150 of the defective $3 Fruit Smash scratch tickets were purchased, said Rula Sharkawi, executive director of communications at the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp.

"Near the end of a print run, there was a small batch of tickets that were misaligned at the printer," she said.

In Fruit Smash, players try to match fruit symbols on two sections of the scratch ticket. The printing misalignment meant that some of the tickets had mismatched symbols underneath the latex surface that game players scratch away, said OLG spokesperson Don Pister.

"The indicator of whether the ticket is a winner or not is the actual ticket, not the latex," she said, adding that the only way to determine a winning ticket is to scan the barcode at a retail outlet.

Gaming officials were alerted to the error Friday after a customer contacted the service hotline. Within hours, officials had traced the ticket to a specific batch and were able to pinpoint which stores the misprinted cards had been shipped to.

Eight retailers, all in southern Ontario, were affected.

So far, 15 unlucky "winners" have contacted OLG offices.

Brampton resident Thomas Noftall was one of them. He purchased four cards on New Year's Eve. In total, the 27-year-old father thought he had won $135,000.

By the time he realized gaming officials weren't likely to give him a penny, he had already made plans to move his family out of their basement apartment, send his children to college and live the life he had always dreamed about.

Ontario policy states that misprinted tickets are void, although the company will refund or replace them.