程阳：马萨诸塞州 Cash Winfall 彩票漏洞

多年不补为谁开？

程阳：美国马萨诸塞州Cash Winfall彩票有漏洞!

 

Who's minding the Lottery machine?

Updated:   08/04/2012 06:59:51 AM EDT

 

 

State Treasurer Steven Grossman called it a "teachable moment." We see it more as business as usual in the Bay State.

 

Grossman was responding to an investigation by Inspector General Gregory W. Sullivan that found state Lottery officials knew for years that gambling syndicates -- including a team of super-smart MIT undergrads -- were exploiting weaknesses in the Cash WinFall game, yet did nothing to stop it until The Boston Globe started asking questions about it.

 

According to Sullivan's report, detailed in Tuesday's Globe, these teams of math and science wizards reaped an $8 million profit in seven years from the Cash WinFall game after discovering that the chances of winning prizes in the drawings rose dramatically under certain conditions. Not only did Lottery officials know about the gambling syndicates reaping millions off the flawed game, they helped ensure their success. The strategy involved buying thousands of tickets when conditions were right -- or simply taking over the game by buying enough tickets to create the conditions for winning.

 

Lottery officials told the Globe they did not know what the MIT syndicate was up to, but Sullivan's investigation found that the Lottery's finance department approved extra ticket sales for stores that the math wizards frequented. In fact, Sullivan's report said some Lottery officials had known as early as 2005 that the flaws in the game were being exploited. They also knew that the owners of two stores agents of the Lottery -- were members of a Michigan-based syndicate, and that syndicate members were allowed to punch their own tickets for the game, the Globe reported. Grossman, who oversees the Lottery, disciplined the store owners who allowed syndicate members to run the Lottery machines.

To his credit, Grossman ended the Cash WinFall game earlier this year and himself sought the IG's probe. On Monday, he apologized to the public and admitted action should have been taken sooner.

 

It's probably unfeasible and unenforceable to bar Lottery agents from buying tickets or profiting from the Lottery beyond the cut of the prize for selling a winning ticket. But such a prohibition is something that's in effect at casinos from Connecticut to Las Vegas. Dealers can't play where they work. Here, it's business as usual.

 

It's clear that Grossman must institute a top-to-bottom review of Lottery practices to ensure that every Lottery employee and agent is upholding the integrity of the games.

 

 

Report: Lottery officials knew of Cash Winfall problems

By Associated Press

Tuesday, July 31, 2012  

BOSTON -- A report by the state Inspector General says lottery officials knew for years that a small group of sophisticated gamblers was reaping high payoffs by manipulating one particular game but did nothing about it until a report by The Boston Globe.

 

The probe into the defunct Cash Winfall game by Inspector General Gregory Sullivan details how a handful of players, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology undergraduates, turned the game into a business, spending $40 million on tickets over a seven-year period and winning an estimated $48 million.

 

Lottery officials not only knew about it, but were happy with the increased sales, even bending rules to allow gamblers to buy hundreds of thousands of tickets at a time.

 

State Treasurer Steven Grossman on Monday apologized. He discontinued Cash Winfall this year.

 

 

 

Massachusetts Cash WinFall Lottery Was Monopolized By Gamblers As State Turned Blind Eye: Report

Posted: 08/02/2012 10:35 am Updated: 08/02/2012 10:56 am

 

Massachusetts state lottery officials did nothing when they found out that one of their games had essentially been monopolized by a group of gamblers, according to a report by Massachusetts' inspector general released Friday.

 

The small group of math and science whizzes, which included a biomedical researcher and MIT undergraduates, outsmarted Massachusetts' Cash WinFall lottery by 2005, according to the report.

 

As the Huffington Post reported last year:

 

Cash WinFall was a relatively obscure game where players had to match six numbers on their ticket with randomly drawn numbers. But if no one matched all six and the unclaimed jackpot was around $2 million, the prize money was redistributed among ticket holders with fewer matching numbers. Statisticians calculated that players buying $100,000 of tickets were virtually guaranteed to win during those brief periods.

The gambling group bought more than $40 million in tickets in all and won roughly $48 million, according to the report and the Boston Globe.

 

Lottery officials found out about the loophole in 2010 or possibly earlier, but didn't do anything about it because the gamblers generated $16 million in revenue for the Massachusetts lottery, according to the report.

 

It was only in the summer of 2011, after the Boston Globe started working on an article about the scheme, that Massachusetts lottery officials placed a $5,000 limit on the amount of tickets that retailers could sell per day.

 

Massachusetts state treasurer Steven Grossman halted the Cash WinFall game this year, according to the Boston Globe. "I feel it is important to essentially apologize to the public," Grossman said. "We're sorry some gained unfair advantage."

 

Massachusetts could have learned its lesson from another state. After Michigan retiree Gerald Selbee figured out how to game Michigan's similar Winfall lottery, he and his gambling group won nearly $8 million, according to Business Insider. When Michigan shut down its WinFall game in 2005, Selbee set his sights on Massachusetts where Cash WinFall had recently been introduced.

 

 

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Is there a way to game the lottery? Without ever winning a jackpot, a small group of bettors have managed to milk a game called Cash WinFall for millions. The key part of the strategy, which resulted recently in just three groups’ holding nearly 70% of the game’s winning tickets, is to play only at specific times and play big time — by purchasing tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of tickets.

A computer scientist from MIT and a low-profile couple that used to run a corner store in Michigan are among the players who apparently figured out an incredibly profitable glitch in one Massachusetts lottery game, according to the Boston Globe.

The game, Cash WinFall, pays a jackpot to the owner of a ticket with numbers matching those on six randomly selected balls. But a tiny number of sophisticated players don’t want anyone to win the jackpot, so that the game’s lesser prizes — awarded for two to five matching numbers — soar in value. Most weeks, a ticket with five matching numbers pays out in the neighborhood of $4,000. But during “rolldown” weeks, when the jackpot tops $2 million and the prize money is rolled down to the smaller prizes, hitting five numbers could net the player $20,000, $40,000 and even $100,000, largely depending on how many winning tickets were sold. Likewise, the prizes for matching three or four numbers rose in value as the overall jackpot increased.

While winning the jackpot would be nice, it’s inessential to reaping a fortune at the game. In fact, there’s good reason to root against anyone’s winning the jackpot because when that happens, the smaller payouts shrink in value. And believe it or not, by playing this game a certain way, at certain times, bettors are almost guaranteed to come out as winners.

(MORE: The Folly of Trying to Time the Market)

The strategy to take advantage of the system almost seems as if it were cooked up by the people running the lottery: to ensure profits, the player must buy a ton of lottery tickets. A math and statistics professor interviewed by the Globe said a mere $10,000 worth of tickets was too risky. But $100,000? Then you’ve got a 72% chance of winning more than they spent on tickets.

The couple featured in the story — Marjorie and Gerald Selbee, who used to run a corner store in Michigan and are in their 70s — recently bought more than $600,000 worth of lottery tickets from stores in western Massachusetts. That’s after already winning nearly $1 million from the game this year, while spending less than $25,000 on tickets.

In May, when there was a rolldown week, just three groups (including the Selbees, of course) hit 1,105 of the 1,605 winning tickets statewide. The Selbees are sure to win again, probably in an eye-poppingly huge way, given their recent “investment.”

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The players, as well as the stores selling the tickets, are remaining quiet about the game, not wanting a good thing ruined. One player, Mark Fettig of Tennessee, who was among the big winners in May, gave few details about his strategies but told the Globe “it would be immoral” to report the story, not in the least because it would hurt his and others’ chances of winning. Yuran Lu, a 28-year-old MIT grad with degrees in electrical engineering, computer science and math, who while still a student gathered 600 student passwords just to show the administration he could, runs a company that has won $765,168 this year at the game. Lu was unavailable for comment, off on a five-week vacation in Europe, though his company has been buying Cash WinFall tickets in his absence.

Thus far, the only actions the state has taken are to temporarily suspend a few stores from selling lottery tickets — not because of suspicion of ticket fraud but for violations such as selling tickets without the purchaser present or when only one employee is in the store, which is not allowed. Some stores will also not be allowed to sell more than $5,000 worth of Cash WinFall tickets per day.

But essentially, the game remains the same, with the odds and payout system unchanged. Something tells me there will be a lot more players as word gets around. A lot more. Like with most lotteries, nearly all of them will lose.

MORE: Q&A with Lottery Wars Author Matthew Sweeney