5 high profile lottery scandals

Every day thousands of lottery tickets are sold around the world. Not everybody wins, but the high amount of money attracts not only honest players but also cheaters. As a result there are some very high profile scandals in lottery draws, which take place in online casino.

A lottery raffle in Pennsylvania

A scandal occurred in Pennsylvania with the Daily Number lottery. The drawing itself was conducted in a standard way: there were balls with numbers in the lotto which were flung upwards by a current of air. Thus, the winning combination was random, based on the laws of physics alone. Cheating, it seemed, was impossible. However, lottery host Nick Perry came up with a cunning way.

To do so, he arranged with several lottery and TV company officials. Nick found the keys and gained access to the lottery machine. He weighed down all the balls except 4 and 6 a little and went out to buy lottery tickets to bet on combinations of those numbers. It seemed that the deception would not be exposed, but elementary greed ruined the crooks. Not only did they want to hit the jackpot, but they also placed bets in bookmakers on combinations of 4 and 6. Because of this, suspicion arose and an investigation was launched.

While watching the draw, it became apparent that only two balls were going up, while the rest practically didn’t go up. Finding the swindlers afterwards proved very easy. Although Perry denied guilt, the accomplices turned him in, in return for commuting their sentences.

Child raffle

The Milan lottery draw was conducted with children. They were blindfolded and pulled balls out of a lottery machine. This method of drawing attracted the attention of fraudsters who encouraged children to take out certain balls. Different methods were used to distinguish them by touch. The balloons were cooled, heated and marked with invisible spray.

All this was done by the lottery organisers themselves, who were able to defraud players out of more than 170 million dollars. After the scam was exposed, a huge scandal erupted. Onlookers demanded that children should be removed from the lottery machines and that there should be no human participation at all. However, with time the buzz around the story died down. The lottery no longer enjoys much popularity in Italy either.

Five minutes to win

Zhao Liqun from China found a quick way to get rich in 2006. He worked as a manager of lottery shops and noticed an interesting feature. It turned out that the Chinese Welfare Lottery had a loophole that allowed you to buy tickets for five minutes after the draw was over.

Zhao exploited this loophole and made almost $4 million in just a year and a half. Although the scammer did not buy the tickets or take the winnings himself, his scheme was uncovered. He lost all his assets and received a life sentence.

A security officer’s ruse

The deputy director of security in an American lottery, Remmele Maziq, decided to earn more than his official salary. The fact is that the company’s employees were required to distribute lottery tickets free of charge in shops.

Remmele did things a little differently. He would take the tickets, but he would not hand them out, he would erase the protective scratch layer. Maziq would throw away the losing tickets and get prize money from the winning ones. But his fraud was eventually uncovered. The court ordered almost $500,000 to be returned to the lottery organizer. Remmele was also sentenced to 37 months in prison.

Stoloto scandal

In 2020, the New Year lottery draw was marked by a scandal. Then a resident of Moscow region won a record 1 billion rubles. However, few people got excited for Nadezhda Bartosh. It soon turned out that she was a relative of a former lottery founder and had a large fortune. Users accused the organisers of illegally withdrawing money, but were unable to prove anything.