yourluckynumbers

I love this question. Thank you for asking it. The lottery industry operates like Las Vegas. In other words, the whole thing is governed by an extreme separation of duties and access controls. Every lottery has a security division that exists for the sole purpose of catching crooks - both internal and external. It's virtually impossible to "rig" a drawing or generate a winning wager post-draw without collusion on the part of at least five or six people. And even then, it would take a miracle to get past audits, system checks, etc.

I'm not saying that people haven't tried, regardless. I'm not even going to say that it hasn't happened. I will say it's a one-way ticket to federal prison, though.

Dozens.

You'd be shocked at how often retailers steal tickets from players by telling them that their ticket isn't a winner. A few states have even gone so far as to set up an undercover team that specializes in catching these people. What they do is present retailers who players have complained about with "marked" tickets and then have them arrested when the retailer comes in to claim the prize. It's a big program in California. They've caught a lot of people.

I've also seen several cases where a retailer is mass producing draw game wagers and re-selling them overseas on the Internet for huge mark-up - sometimes as much as 1000% of face value. That's a quick path to prison, too.

And then, of course, we get idiots who do everything they can to make losing tickets look like winners hoping to get an idiot convenience store clerk to "sight validate" the ticket instead of scanning it in the system to see if it's a win. We discourage the hell out of that behavior. Clerks should never pay out based on a ticket they THINK is a winner. I will never understand why they don't just scan the damn things.

I know of one situation in another state where an employee got caught trying to rig orders on instant tickets by working with a friend who was a night shift clerk at a convenience store.

They got caught and did two years apiece.

That special is part of the reason I started this thread. It was actually the second time Hansen has done a piece on retailer scams. The first one sent a shockwave through the industry and caused several lotteries to create programs due to outcry from players following the revelation that people steal things.

I once talked to a guy who was claiming a $50,000 win. He wasn't excited because he was "just breaking even".

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