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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

#171

Post by rdtsc »

jacquesm wrote: post #96
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 would go for the contrary interpretation: he helped people become wary of lotteries and showed them beyond a shadow of doubt that they could be rigged even if they appeared to be fair. He did in fact damage the lottery, not the non-lottery winners (in the aggregate maybe, but not in a specific way) other than that he hopefully vaccinated them and caused them to bow out of playing the lottery altogether thus saving…

> he helped people become wary of lotteries and showed them beyond a shadow of doubt that they could be rigged

Yap, I was kind of hinting at that. What you said is a valid way to look at it.

> It's fine to gamble as long as the beneficiary is the state, never mind that on average only the lottery organizer gets ahead.

It's part of preying on the poor. Same with payday loans, and alcohol sales. Having lived in poor parts of town it's common to see all 3 being marketed and pushed heavily in those areas. They might claim they don't want to regulate payday loans because "free markets" whatnot, but state lotteries directly controlled by the government. The pretense they use is that proceeds pay for "education". Except even if it is true, then what happens is that education funds get reduced and used for something else because there are these "lottery funds" coming in. So somehow kids getting scholarships or teachers better salaries doesn't usually pan out as expected.

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

#172

Post by Chathamization »

diggernet wrote: post #148
Chathamization wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never really understood this argument. I mean, you can daydream for free about Warren Buffet choosing you at random to give $300 million to, or inheriting a distant relatives belongings and finding a Pollock in there. Maybe with the lottery its easier for people to deceive themselves about the actual odds?

I imagine the odds of winning the lottery, as low as they are, are significantly higher than Buffet giving you $300M. It's not deceiving yourself to recognize that miniscule odds are greater than zero.

Not sure why you think it would be 0%; people have stumbled across $15 million Pollock paintings by accident[1]. William Durkin happened to be at the right place at the right time to save Howard Hughe's life, and it looks like he was at least offered money afterwards[2]. There's plenty of other stories where something extremely unlikely happens and someone gets rich.

The likelihood of winning the Powerball is something like 0.000000005%. Not sure what the odds are of these other unlikely events, but even if they're less likely - you really think someone is able to daydream about a 0.000000005% chance but not a 0.000000000005% chance?

[1] http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/12/us/lost-jackson-pollock-painti... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Hughes#Near-fatal_crash...

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

#173

Post by dsfyu404ed »

ransom1538 wrote: post #53

Ok. Do these guys that commit white collar crime not know how a passport works? If you have millions of dollars stashed in bank accounts WHY are you in the US? Why are you buying estates and testing out a new bmwI8 and spilling champagne all over? Why not get on a plane go to Morocco (a country with an extremely complex extradition process)? wtf. Even the guy running silk road was hanging out in SF now lives in a 4x6…

If the exploit looks super obvious and you're not hearing about people using it that's a good indication that people are using it and smart enough to keep their mouths shut.

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

#174

Post by PhasmaFelis »

wbl wrote: post #83
pseingatl wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snowden didn't defect. He was on his way to Venezuela, which had granted him asylum. The US canceled his passport, stranding him in Russia. Even though the Venezuelan Air Force has an Airbus, flying to Russia non-stop was not feasible--Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia, had his plane forced down on the suspicion that Snowden was aboard. Still, if Putin wanted to get Snowden to Venezuela, all he had to do was put…

If Venezuela was willing to let him travel there they could have issued him documentation to do so.

Please read the post you're responding to again.

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

#175

Post by [deleted] »

ahhhhhhhhhh wrote: post #35
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?

>but I think people know what a longshot is. Gambling addiction and various mega-jackpot ticket-purchasing fervors are an indication that many people can't really comprehend the odds. A human can easily visualize 1 (the number of jackpot winners), but less so the scale of the 292,201,337 chances you have to lose (Powerball odds) If you had a contest where you asked someone to pay $5 to correctly choose a single grain…

[deleted]

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

#176

Post by Chathamization »

mrb wrote: post #161
kibwen wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 thinkin…

> On the other hand when he spent $10 on a lottery ticket he was entertained for days just thinking of the possibility of winning

With a slightly better imagination he could save the $10 and daydream for days about a close relative/friend winning the lottery and gifting him a substantial chunk of the money.

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

#177

Post by damontal »

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.

doesn't coinbase require a link to a bank account? so you'd need to have millions in your bank account to buy the BTC.

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

#178

Post by wbl »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #174
wbl wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Venezuela was willing to let him travel there they could have issued him documentation to do so.

Please read the post you're responding to again.

The cancellation had no effect on the ability of Venezuela or Russia to permit him to travel.

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

#180

Post by mynameishere »

Rjevski wrote: post #145

I'm not saying this person is innocent, but 25 years for something that didn't hurt anyone is way excessive. This sentence would be more appropriate for murderers, and yet some of them get way less.

Seems like he hurt every single person who played the game without cheating, to an aggregate of millions of dollars. Seems like 25 years is extraordinarily generous. If he picked 10,000 pockets or robbed 1000 banks he would get life in prison, and deserve it.
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