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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

#161

Post by mrb »

kibwen wrote: post #75
temp-dude-87844 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I support the idea that lottery and gambling is for 'entertainment purposes only', if one never buys into the lottery, they can never obtain the winnings. Buying exactly one ticket per drawing at least places one in the pool of potential winners, despite the odds being rather long. Although the expected value is still minuscule, it's an unquantifiable improvement (since we can't divide by zero). And before you…

> Although the expected value is still minuscule, it's an unquantifiable improvement (since we can't divide by zero). This isn't how it works, because the expected value, in monetary terms, is negative once you factor in the cost of the tickets. Statistically, it is a quantifiable unimprovement. That said, lots of activities have negative expected monetary value, like going to the movies, or going bowling. And it is…

> This isn't how it works, because the expected value, in monetary terms, is negative...

I once heard a statistics professor explaining he played the lottery. His reason? It was fun. Period. He said one may spend $10 on a movie ticket and be entertained for a few hours, but one would end up $10 poorer with 100% certainty. On the other hand when he spent $10 on a lottery ticket he was entertained for days just thinking of the possibility of winning, and he might end up a lot richer, but it was not a necessary condition for him to enjoy the fun it provides.

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

#162

Post by mafsedan »

upofadown wrote: post #30

Anyone know why these lotteries stopped using the traditional bingo ball machines in favour of a black box?

I don't know how feasible it is, but there was an episode of "Better Call Saul" where Jimmy McGill rigged a ball-and-air bingo machine used to run games in a senior home.

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

#164

Post by whipoodle »

bluedino wrote: post #115

It is a bit amazing when you think that on average, there is a new millionaire (or even multi-millionaire) made by the different lotteries in the USA every day

It would be interesting to know the rate at which they subsequently fall out of that status.

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

#165

Post by prawn »

ransom1538 wrote: post #86
aw3c2 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe because they like living in the US and like having that money there? I doubt that a want to completely changing one's culture is what drives people to commit monetary fraud.

Living in a 4x6 concrete cube would be much more of culture shock for me.

He didn't do it assuming he'd get caught.

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

#166

Post by prawn »

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've seen a story about it being the only readily and quickly accessible thing approaching small scale investment for people.

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

#167

Post by FooHentai »

tuna-piano wrote: post #102
upofadown wrote: post #30

Anyone know why these lotteries stopped using the traditional bingo ball machines in favour of a black box?

It's really telling when computer experts are the ones most scared ahout electronic voting, software lotteries, etc. Even the best BitCoin experts seem to recommend burying your bitcoin key in you yard or storing it on paper at the bank.

Absolutely. The most useful idea I've seen about how to think about this is this: 'On a network, everything is at zero distance'.

So, imagine the worst people you can imagine in the whole world, sitting right there in the same room as all the things you care about. You'd probably be worried about that, right?

But, the argument goes, we have all these security measures in place between those things. They're not in the same room we've built all these walls! Sure, but those walls are not impenetrable by a long shot. None of them beats simply not being in the same place. Nobody has a teleporter yet, but those layers of security you are relying on are vulnerable to a constantly evolving landscape of exploits, vulnerabilities and plain old fuck-ups.

This is why air gaps are still such a valuable concept. Why off-siting your backup tapes is not an outdated step but rather a pragmatic step in securing your information assets. Why keeping some systems unplugged from any network when they're running critical infrastructure is sensible. Why buring your bitcoin wallet in some secret location is not the behaviour of an off-the-wall tinfoil nutter.

There are, of course, steps to be taken if you have compelling reasons to stay connected, and those steps can get you to (or close to) the same level of assurance as unplugging. But those steps are complex, require ongoing maintenance, and operate in an evolving threat landscape. Think for example: Encryption protocols that we used to consider secure.

There's a simple bypass for that effort and knowledge and it's to unplug. It's a very powerful tool, and yet often ridiculed, in my opinion from positions of either ignorance or zealotry.

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

#168

Post by badestrand »

celim307 wrote: post #132
Swizec wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why not get on a plane go to Morocco (a country with an extremely complex extradition process)? Why don't people in poor countries just move to better countries? Why do people stay in the rust belt instead of moving to the coast? Why do people on the coast whine about rent instead of moving inland? Leaving everything you know is hard. To quote a famous quote > I always wonder why birds choose to stay in the same pl…

Not really a good analogy as the limiting factor in your scenarios is often money

No, it is a valid point.

Take Germany for example: In the neighbouring country Switzerland you can easily earn twice as much and the higher living costs only cancel out a part of the difference. >80% of Germans would have the money to move and would be much better off and still only very few do it (Same with all the unemployment in Spain, people could move to e.g. Germany in masses but they don't.

People just don't like change and are not the rational players everyone wants them to be.

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

#169

Post by wongarsu »

chiliap2 wrote: post #121
pessimizer wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most criminals get away with most crimes. 40% of murders go unsolved.

Wouldn't that mean they don't get away with most murders?

It's close enough that undetected/unreported murders could tip the scales. If you get away with making it look like an accident, isn't in the statistic of unsolved murders.

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

#170

Post by [deleted] »

gnaritas wrote: post #140
KekDemaga wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you buy millions of dollars worth of bitcoin? Paypal?

On a bitcoin exchange like Coinbase. Plenty of people have millions of dollars of Bitcoin. 10 million USD is about 2500 bitcoins, that'd barely move the market if purchased all at once, not at all if spread out over a day or two. 24 hour trading volume is about 3 billion USD.

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