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+--- Thread: Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code (/thread-5654.html)
Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code - Ed Jewett - 03-02-2011
Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code
February 2nd, 2011 Via: Wired:
As a trained statistician with degrees from MIT and Stanford University, Srivastava was intrigued by the technical problem posed by the lottery ticket. In fact, it reminded him a lot of his day job, which involves consulting for mining and oil companies. A typical assignment for Srivastava goes like this: A mining company has multiple samples from a potential gold mine. Each sample gives a different estimate of the amount of mineral underground. "My job is to make sense of those results," he says. "The numbers might seem random, as if the gold has just been scattered, but they're actually not random at all. There are fundamental geologic forces that created those numbers. If I know the forces, I can decipher the samples. I can figure out how much gold is underground."
Srivastava realized that the same logic could be applied to the lottery. The apparent randomness of the scratch ticket was just a facade, a mathematical lie. And this meant that the lottery system might actually be solvable, just like those mining samples. "At the time, I had no intention of cracking the tickets," he says. He was just curious about the algorithm that produced the numbers. Walking back from the gas station with the chips and coffee he'd bought with his winnings, he turned the problem over in his mind. By the time he reached the office, he was confident that he knew how the software might work, how it could precisely control the number of winners while still appearing random.
…
Furthermore, the Massachusetts lottery has a history of dispensing large payouts to suspected criminals, at least in one Mass Millions game. In 1991, James "Whitey" Bulger, a notorious South Boston mob boss currently on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted Fugitives listhe's thought to be the inspiration for the Frank Costello character in The Departedand three others cashed in a winning lottery ticket worth $14.3 million. He collected more than $350,000 before his indictment.
At the time, authorities thought Bulger was using the lottery to launder money: take illicit profits, buy a share in a winning lottery ticket, redeem it, and end up with clean cash. In this respect, the lottery system seems purpose-built for organized crime, says Michael Plichta, unit chief of the FBI's organized crime section. "When I was working in Puerto Rico, I watched all these criminals use traditional lottery games to clean their money," he remembers. "You'd bring these drug guys in, and you'd ask them where their income came from, how they could afford their mansion even though they didn't have a job, and they'd produce all these winning lottery tickets. That's when I began to realize that they were using the games to launder cash."
The problem for the criminals, of course, is that unless cracked, most lotteries return only about 53 cents on the dollar, which means that they'd be forfeiting a significant share of their earnings. But what if criminals aren't playing the lottery straight? What if they have a method that, like Srivastava's frequency-of-occurrence trick, can dramatically increase the odds of winning? As Srivastava notes, if organized crime had a system that could identify winning tickets more than 65 percent of the time, then the state-run lottery could be turned into a profitable form of money laundering. "You've got to realize that, for people in organized crime, making piles of money is one of their biggest problems," says Charles Johnston, a supervisory special agent in the organized crime section of the FBI. "If they could find a way to safely launder money without taking too big a loss, then I can guarantee you they'd start doing it in a heartbeat." There is no direct evidence that criminals are actually using these government-run gambling games to hide their crimes. But the circumstantial evidence, as noted by the FBI, is certainly troubling.
And then there's Joan Ginther, who has won more than $1 million from the Texas Lottery on four different occasions. She bought two of the winners from the same store in Bishop, Texas. What's strangest of all, perhaps, is that three of Ginther's wins came from scratch tickets with baited hooks and not from Mega Millions or Powerball. Last June, Ginther won $10 million from a $50 ticket, which is the largest scratch prize ever awarded by the Texas Lottery.
Perhaps Ginther is simply the luckiest person on earth. (She has refused almost all requests from journalists for comment.) While the lotteries are extremely rigorous about various aspects of security, from the integrity of the latex to the cashing of tickets at stores, the industry appears to have not considered the possibility of plundering the games using the visible numbers on the ticket. For instance, when I contacted the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries, their security experts couldn't recall having heard of Mohan Srivastava or the broken Ontario games. This is one of the largest trade associations of lotteries in the world, and it had no recollection that at least a few of its games had been proven to be fatally flawed.
Posted in Economy, Technology
Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code - David Guyatt - 03-02-2011
Curiously enough, the entity that won the British franchise twice in succession, the Camelot Group - despite better bids from Virgin's Richard Branson - turned out to have US organized criminal connections, as I remember.
Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code - Magda Hassan - 03-02-2011
For a commission there are lawyers here in Sydney who can get you the winning horse or lottery ticket if you need it.
Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code - David Guyatt - 03-02-2011
I needed it.
And so I've placed a bet on the gee-gee called "Sumo" in the 3:30 at Canterbury Park. 100-1. Not bad odds for a certain win.
I understand it will be televised...:wavey:
Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code - Magda Hassan - 03-02-2011
I hate to break it to you fast Eddie but the winning ticket will cost you the prize pool plus 20-30% of that depending on how much your lawyer friend likes you. As long as you have your correct amount of inconvenient money you're sure to have your lucky numbers come up regardless of any colours or horse or combination you fancy. Hind sight is always 20/20/.
Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code - Ed Jewett - 04-02-2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6djgavbp7c
Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code - John Kowalski - 05-02-2011
Here is a story from Canada how two brothers made millions betting on sporting events.
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=74e47320-ecf5-496d-a23f-e6440ece5134
John
Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code - Bernice Moore - 22-07-2011
FBI pride in mobster's arrest may vanish as he starts talking
http://www.lvrj.com/news/fbi-pride-in-mobster-s-arrest-may-vanish-as-he-starts-talking-124558804.html
Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code - Allison Hunt - 23-07-2011
I personally know of one individual whom has won the California lottery more than once. If hitting the lottery is tougher than a lightening strike then hitting it twice is simply not possible in a fair game. That's all I know.
Moreover, game fixing is ubiquitous. I attended a corporate Christmas party, which gave out sizable cash prizes by drawing serial numbered tickets out of a barrel. This corporation guardedly gave out one ticket to each of it's 4,000 employees. The giveaway was long thought to be fixed. The whole thing became exposed when one employee won twice. The first time he won because somebody had palmed a ticket for him... then the second time he won for real. That marked the end of the corporate Christmas parties.