The printers definitely know which tickets are winners, or at least have the ability to do so. I used to be in the printing industry, and part of the job is inspecting your product for proper color density, hue, vibrance, the color alignment, the alignment of the page itself, and so on. I worked printing the newspaper. You have to see to it that everything is set right. You do this at the beginning, and all through the printing process. It has to be dark enough to look nice, yet not too dark so as to rub off on the paper it is contacting.
Unless you are using a specific color ink for a more precise job, you only have 4 colors to work with: yellow, magenta, cyan and black. Any color in the world can be made from those 4, but it does not happen by itself. You need a good eye, and the first ticket should look as good as the last. You don't want to see the back of the newspaper on the front page, nor do you want to see it on lottery tickets. Real printing is a whole lot more technical than printing something off on your ink-jet or laser printer. The difference is like the difference between driving 3,000 pound cars and 80,000 pound tractor trailers. I have done all of the above. You need a highly skilled person to print lottery tickets, and I would bet that they might have to pass some type of extensive background check.
On the other hand, it looks to me like the ticket number is printed on the front AFTER the rest of the ticket is printed, but I may be wrong. It looks like it is printed after the coating is put on, so my guess is that the person who initially prints the ticket knows that the ticket is or is not a winner, but does not know at that point in time what the ticket number is. Likewise, the person printing the three digit number probably does not see what is under the coating, so they cannot see whether or not it is a winning ticket. I am only speculating, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. I have not printed lottery tickets, only newspapers, in one printing pass. I have never printed multi-step products, except in high school, in graphic arts class.
I think the artwork is printed first, then the background. After that probably the numbers and symbols. Then after that, the coating which hides the numbers and symbols which you scratch off. Then most likely the back of the ticket and the front 3 digit code are printed. Once again, I may be dead wrong. I am just making an educated guess based on my training and experience. It may be all automated, or some of it, but someone has to do quality checks. Someone has to make sure that the tickets are printed to look right. Someone also has to do periodic spot checks to make sure the winners are where they should be, and in the right amounts, etc.
The printers would have to be in cahoots, but if the ticket numbers on the back of the tickets are printed after covering, it would be difficult to keep up with them. On the other hand, if the front and back of the tickets are printed at the same time, and before the coating goes on, then all bets are off. They could see everything, including the pack number, but they probably would not know where the tickets are headed. I know that they say that the tickets are sent out randomly, but I can tell you for certain that at least one convenience store I know of has 2 sets of three consecutive books. Books with the following numbers were all put out around the same time, at the same store: 842-171381-XXX, 842-171382-XXX, 842-171383-XXX, 842-194921-XXX, 842-194922-XXX, 842-194923-XXX.
I was in a part of town yesterday that I am not usually in, so I bought a ticket at the store, and the clerk steered me away from the Holiday Gifts ticket when I asked about it. He said that a man had just come in and hit for $100 on that game, and he showed me the prior ticket. The clerk also stated that the same man had purchased another ticket, either 10x The Money or Sapphires and Gold , at the same time, and it had hit for $100 also. The only identifying comment was that the man was Chinese, so that is all I know. That seems a little suspicious to me, but it could have been just random. $10 spent on 2 tickets, and the man walks away with $200. Kind of makes you wonder, doesn't it.
If you seem like you are getting too close to figuring things out, then the Lottery Commission might take you on a one-way camping trip. Or they might take you on a fishing trip with a few of their buddies. They might make you some nice designer cement shoes. They might show you how to skydive without a parachute. Say, what happened to that guy that used to post on here a while back? It seems like I haven't heard from him in a while.