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Improbably Frequent Lottery Winners

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Re: Improbably Frequent Lottery Winners

#11
It's too bad the article doesn't go in more depth. There are a few plausible explanations for why people claim an unusually high number of prizes:

1) Someone is buying a huge number of tickets, and just winning proportional to the amount that they spend.

2) Someone is a "10 percenter." They buy winning tickets at a discount to the prize amount, collect losing tickets that they didn't actually buy, and commit blatant tax fraud by claiming "losses" that offset their "winnings."

3) Someone knows which tickets are going to win before buying them.

All three of these stories are interesting, but they're very different. Most coverage seems to assume (2), but stops at "tax agency is incompetent at detecting blatant tax fraud" without exploring why the tax agency is so bad at what they do.

Re: Improbably Frequent Lottery Winners

#12

It's too bad the article doesn't go in more depth. There are a few plausible explanations for why people claim an unusually high number of prizes: 1) Someone is buying a huge number of tickets, and just winning proportional to the amount that they spend. 2) Someone is a "10 percenter." They buy winning tickets at a discount to the prize amount, collect losing tickets that they didn't actually buy, and commit blatant…

They link to the actual article: http://www.pennlive.com/watchdog/2017/09/defying_the_odds_pa...

It covers some of the explanations for why some people claim so many prizes:

> Based on legal proceedings, lottery investigations and confessions from some frequent winners, the following techniques - or a combination of them - have generally explained how some players have defied the odds:

> 1. "Theft": As in Ontario, investigators have repeatedly caught store clerks or owners stealing winning lottery tickets from prize claimants and claiming them for themselves. To allay suspicion, some have used friends or family members to cash stolen tickets on their behalf.

> 2. Cheating: It's difficult to cheat the lottery, but some players have been caught "micro-scratching," a practice where a person, typically a store clerk or owner, scratches a tiny portion of an unsold scratch ticket to see if it's a winner and then claims it.

> 3. "Ticket cashing" or "discounting": A practice where a person cashes in a winning ticket on someone else's behalf. Often the seller is trying to avoid having debts, like overdue child support payments, from being deducted from their winnings. Typically the winner sells their ticket to the buyer at less than its value - a "discount" - which allows the buyer to make a small profit. In some states, like Virginia, this practice is illegal. In other states, like Pennsylvania, it isn't.

> 4. Money laundering: Some states have caught criminals buying winning lottery tickets from players and then cashing them for themselves. By doing so, they effectively turn "dirty money," like drug profits, into "clean money." In a well-known case, the "Black Mafia Family" purchased more than $1 million in winning Michigan lottery tickets between 1990 and 2005.

Re: Improbably Frequent Lottery Winners

#13

It's too bad the article doesn't go in more depth. There are a few plausible explanations for why people claim an unusually high number of prizes: 1) Someone is buying a huge number of tickets, and just winning proportional to the amount that they spend. 2) Someone is a "10 percenter." They buy winning tickets at a discount to the prize amount, collect losing tickets that they didn't actually buy, and commit blatant…

Well, they did basically rule out #1 for the top guy, where they say even spending $300 million on tickets would still only give him a 1 in 10 million change of winning so much.

Re: Improbably Frequent Lottery Winners

#16

Has anyone considered some of these people might be psychic? Professor Daryl Bem's published study "Feeling the Future" comes to mind.

You're being serious? I don't mean to be overly hostile, but the implications would be world-shattering and the "mundane" explanation is quite sufficient. Also lottery-winning psychics wouldn't get caught.

Re: Improbably Frequent Lottery Winners

#17

Has anyone considered some of these people might be psychic? Professor Daryl Bem's published study "Feeling the Future" comes to mind.

You're being serious? I don't mean to be overly hostile, but the implications would be world-shattering and the "mundane" explanation is quite sufficient. Also lottery-winning psychics wouldn't get caught.

The mundane explanations doesn't answer anything. It's just pure speculation. They didn't eben talk to the guy who had the most frequent wins. Why wouldn't psychics get caught?

Re: Improbably Frequent Lottery Winners

#19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're being serious? I don't mean to be overly hostile, but the implications would be world-shattering and the "mundane" explanation is quite sufficient. Also lottery-winning psychics wouldn't get caught.

The mundane explanations doesn't answer anything. It's just pure speculation. They didn't eben talk to the guy who had the most frequent wins. Why wouldn't psychics get caught?

...because psychics don't exist

Re: Improbably Frequent Lottery Winners

#20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're being serious? I don't mean to be overly hostile, but the implications would be world-shattering and the "mundane" explanation is quite sufficient. Also lottery-winning psychics wouldn't get caught.

The mundane explanations doesn't answer anything. It's just pure speculation. They didn't eben talk to the guy who had the most frequent wins. Why wouldn't psychics get caught?

Psychics explanations don't explain anything.
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