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Ex-lottery worker who rigged winnings gets 25 years in prison

money.cnn.com

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Re: Ex-lottery worker who rigged winnings gets 25 years in prison

#41

Post by glitcher »

mrleiter wrote: post #15
rdtsc wrote: post #7

> "It's difficult even saying that with all the people that I know behind me that I hurt." It is interesting to think about who he considers he hurt. The potential winners who relied on lottery winning to secure a future for their families? The lottery workers? He is a criminal surely, but isn't the whole lottery system a tax on lack of education and it just gives false hope to people and encourages gambling. He redu…

I believe he refers to his loved ones.

This is the correct answer. He doesn't care about the lottery system, the states, or the potential winners that didn't get their chance. But getting busted for the crime hurts everyone who cares about him.

> all the people that I know behind me that I hurt

As in sitting directly behind him in the courtroom waiting for sentencing.

Re: Ex-lottery worker who rigged winnings gets 25 years in prison

#42

Post by wyldfire »

tlb wrote: post #5
socalnate1 wrote: post #2

How could you possibly believe you would get away with something like this.

He started in 2005 and the investigation started in 2015, so he did get away with it for 10 years. He probably could have won a few, stopped, and gotten away with it if he'd been less greedy. The code was clever, generating predictable numbers on a few particular days of the year. And it must have been subtle, to survive 10 years of nobody else noticing.

I think a big flag would be lots of winning tickets with the numbers selected. I suspect some astonishingly high rate of tickets sold are selected by the lottery terminal ("quick pick").

Re: Ex-lottery worker who rigged winnings gets 25 years in prison

#43

Post by fitchjo »

booleandilemma wrote: post #27
Isamu wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a tax on lack of education I hear this a lot, but I think people know what a longshot is. Is this so much more stupid than throwing your money away on useless consumer junk?

I once read the lottery is a way of buying hope.

I play every once in awhile, when the jackpot gets to be large enough they start talking about it on TV. The $10 or $20 I spend is well worth daydreaming about the things I would if I won.

Re: Ex-lottery worker who rigged winnings gets 25 years in prison

#44

Post by Retric »

hamandcheese wrote: post #29
Isamu wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a tax on lack of education I hear this a lot, but I think people know what a longshot is. Is this so much more stupid than throwing your money away on useless consumer junk?

Most the people I see buying lottery tickets are in no position to throw money away on anything .

Even homeless people generally have some disposable income. They simply have different priorities, which does not make either of you correct.

Re: Ex-lottery worker who rigged winnings gets 25 years in prison

#45

Post by bluGill »

lazerpants wrote: post #22
huebnerob wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially with a frankly embarrassingly poor attempt to place distance between himself and the payouts. He picked his own brother and a close family friend? Might as well have walked up to his boss every other week with a spot of feigned surprise and a new jackpot winning ticket to cash out, figuring they could direct deposit it along with his paycheck. Really makes you wonder how many moderately intelligent people…

As a thought exercise, what do you think the minimum distance between the cheater and the payout would need to be in order to avoid detection?

High enough that you can't fully trust the guy getting the payout to share.

If someone you just vaguely know made you an offer to get this payout would you accept it or turn them in? Most of us reading this make enough money that we can afford to be honest in cases like this, so it is a moral question only - are you really dishonest enough to cheat?

Re: Ex-lottery worker who rigged winnings gets 25 years in prison

#46

Post by vertex-four »

hamandcheese wrote: post #29
Isamu wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a tax on lack of education I hear this a lot, but I think people know what a longshot is. Is this so much more stupid than throwing your money away on useless consumer junk?

Most the people I see buying lottery tickets are in no position to throw money away on anything .

Ehh. A $1/week expense which buys you hope and dreams for a week isn't that bad in the grand scheme of things. It's certainly cheaper than cigarettes, alcohol, or drugs to temporarily take the stress out of the fact that you're in a long-term shitty situation with little way out of it.

This concept that the poor should only ever work, eat, and sleep, and any attempt to look after their mental health is wasting money, is outright dangerous.

Re: Ex-lottery worker who rigged winnings gets 25 years in prison

#47

Post by mrighele »

hamandcheese wrote: post #29
Isamu wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a tax on lack of education I hear this a lot, but I think people know what a longshot is. Is this so much more stupid than throwing your money away on useless consumer junk?

Most the people I see buying lottery tickets are in no position to throw money away on anything .

My guess is that when you are that much poor, you don't just buy the chance of winning, but also a little amount of hope that helps to get through the dull (or even awful) life. Even if you don't win you get something back for that money.

Re: Ex-lottery worker who rigged winnings gets 25 years in prison

#48

Post by c3534l »

mythrwy wrote: post #6
socalnate1 wrote: post #2

How could you possibly believe you would get away with something like this.

Related question: how many people have gotten away with things like this that we have no knowledge of?

This guy got away with it for 5 years. The only other one I know of is the McDonald's Monopoly guy who rigged it for 4 years. This tells me you can get away with it for a while, repeatedly. And I really doubt most people would take a huge payout, then keep working that job to do it again. So I suspect that it takes 4 or 5 years to get caught and we're just catching the minority of people greedy enough to keep their scam going for years, despite the massive amounts of money they've accumulated already.

Re: Ex-lottery worker who rigged winnings gets 25 years in prison

#49

Post by logfromblammo »

weaksauce wrote: post #10
socalnate1 wrote: post #2

How could you possibly believe you would get away with something like this.

smart enough to pull it off but dumb enough to think that having your brother win a $14,000,000 prize is not suspicious and wouldn't be investigated... that's impressive.

Even the stupid lizard criminal portion of my brain tells me that you never set yourself up to win the jackpot. You take the third place prize.

But even then, you need a plausible reason to be cashing in so many winning tickets, so you also spend some of your guaranteed winnings on losing tickets, and also buy a bunch that will break even. That 3rd-place prize is less suspicious if you're also cashing in 1000 $2 winners at the same time, and putting it all into a "Lottery Buyer's Club LLC" account.

It's the Superman III principle. You can steal as many half-pennies as you can haul away in a truck, but if you take even one $10000 note, someone is going to notice.

Re: Ex-lottery worker who rigged winnings gets 25 years in prison

#50

Post by jrs95 »

rdtsc wrote: post #7

> "It's difficult even saying that with all the people that I know behind me that I hurt." It is interesting to think about who he considers he hurt. The potential winners who relied on lottery winning to secure a future for their families? The lottery workers? He is a criminal surely, but isn't the whole lottery system a tax on lack of education and it just gives false hope to people and encourages gambling. He redu…

Honestly I think if what he did reduces what people spend on lottery tickets, it was ultimately a good thing. It’s sad how much is wasted on that.
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