This is a case that stumps me. I realize it's possible, but this case not resulting in somebody being prosecuted leads me to believe there has been no serious investigation.

Indeed. Remember reading something about someone else who cashed in large amounts that were suspiciously large and frequently and think they had some ties to the lottery. Haven't been able to find it again though.

Yet the case of Joan Ginther is quite improbable if she didn't have some sort of inside connection.

While not the same, reminds me of a Saved By The Bell episode. They scheme up running a raffle with a prize of a vacation to Hawaii (?) to the winner but rig it so Screech "wins' the prize, which was non-existent to begin with.

Is it that far fetched to think some lotteries could be doing the same thing? The fact that Joan Ginther refused much publicity and the lack of an investigation makes it smell fishy. I thought with winning big prizes like that at a casino or in a lottery comes with allowing publicity of your winnings. Don't know what kind of independent vetting is involved with state run lotteries, but I'd imagine such a statistical anomaly like that of Ginther's would've led to an independent investigation.

There's no incentive to police parimutuel games unless the publicity brings the honesty of the game into question -- it stuns me that this series of incidents didn't generate that publicity. As I recall, she was a math specialist of some sort, which made it a lot more suspicious in my opinion -- a logical person is much more likely to have discovered an exploit than to have spent a fortune on scratch tickets.

What kind of scanner do I need to get? If you had one, I bet you could make a decent amount of money off of selling the losers to other people at a discount.

No exact proof, but unverifiable sources (wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lottery ) and a few others point to her having cracked the distribution algorithm.
" It was speculated that there was actually a pattern to where and when the winning tickets were sold, and that Professor Ginther had figured out this pattern"
She also seemed to be requesting stores buy certain types of big ticket cards etc.

It of course would not be impossible for someone to win that many big jackpots that many times buying large numbers of tickets(she bought something like 3000+ a year), but they estimate the odds to be:
"The fourth time she won the lottery, AP wrote that her chance was 1 in 18 septimillion, which 1 in 18,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (24 zeros in front of 18)."

I'm not sure exactly what, but it seems like she figured something out. She has never done any public interviews or anything(i wouldn't either if i figured something out).
She now lives in vegas....

Supposedly it is not possible anymore, but what the trend seems to be is that on certain cards that have hooks, such as bingo boards, or cross words, or tic tac toe, that the boards reveal something about the likelihood of winning.

It wouldn't surprise me if you could still crack it without scratching them.

It comes back to how to unload the losers, sure I might be able to sell them at a discount, let's say half price.

Problem is people would be suspicious if you were selling them cheap, I know i wouldn't necessarily trust it. I also think since the buyers would have pretty much no winners that you would not have repeat customers.

As someone noted, the best way would be to maybe have an inside man or 2 at some convenient stores, but it goes back to the old, "The only way to keep a secret between 3 people is if 2 of them are dead."

It's probably just that they give a few big winners to distant relatives' friends and get sloppy with it sometimes. the McDonald's Monopoly contest did the same thing and got busted and they're a bigger company than any scratch ticket distributor right?

http://boardgames.about.com/od/monop...nalds_scam.htm

Scratch cards are without a doubt rigged to atleast the same extent. Someone's distributing them, and that person has a family, a distant family, and friends of their distant family, and friends of those friends.

I work in construction. I was purchasing some tiles from a small tile store. They had a draw for a trip to Vegas. I was in the store on the day before the draw and noticed there was not a single name in the box. I put my name in the box. I was back in the store about a week later. The box was in the same place and my name was still the only name in the box. I asked who won the trip. The owner of the store paused for a minute and made up a name....

I've seen a mate buy 1,000 lottery tickets and busto on all 1,000.

I assume ypu had to pay for your entry? Anyways, what'd they scam you out of? Like $5 or $10? Sounds like a failure of a scam to me.

Anyone familiar with how to make FOIA requests? I'm curious to start collecting data on when/where grand prizes are claimed. Not all states publish that data on their website but I've heard it's still possible to get through FOIA.

Always wondered about playing the lottery in a really small place like rhode island to increase your chances. Or maybe there is a specific state with a very small amount of lottery retailers so it would be easier to hit all the places.

I’m from RI, no longer live there... BUT the amounts of lottery scratch off tickets retailers are insane. Even some bars/restaurants sell them (if they have the Keno game provided by the RI LOT)

Some even have automatic ticket dispensers. Rhode Islanders are total degens and payout percentage is smaller on their scratch off’s than neighboring state of MA

that scratch off article was pretty intense. too bad that best case scenario the hourly is pits though.

Is this not standard in every state?