The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation is considering banning clerks who sell lottery tickets from playing, after an investigation showed people behind the counter have been winning prizes far more often than statistically probable.

Telling insiders and clerks and retailers they just can't play is "something we're looking at," Duncan Brown, CEO of the lottery corporation, told CBC.

"The difficulty in simply saying that we're going to embrace that idea is that it's really not that easy."

The lottery corporation recently announced new security measures after an investigation by the CBC's The Fifth Estate revealed retailers were claiming an inordinate share of lottery wins. The Fifth Estate has also learned that at one point, retailers and clerks were winning on scratch tickets 10 per cent of the time.

Ontario ombudsman André Marin said he's also looking into the idea of banning people who sell tickets from buying them.

But the big challenge for enforcing such an idea is the sheer numbers, Brian Yelland of the Gambling Watch Network points out. There are roughly 140,000 people selling lottery tickets in Ontario.

"It would raise the question as to who exactly can and cannot play — family members, close relatives, close friends," Yelland said. "You just get somebody else to buy the ticket, put it in under somebody else's name."

No province or state in the U.S. currently bans retailers from buying tickets.