How have lottery scandals rocked the world?
Every year people around the world buy millions of lottery tickets. They are driven by passion and the desire to win big prizes. It also drives players to play online casino slots that offer the opportunity to hit the real jackpot.
The most trust people have developed in those lotteries that are live-streamed. It is believed that this eliminates the risk of cheating the participants. Therefore, situations where viewers are cheated on the live broadcast become truly scandalous.
Irish bingo
In 2017, a lottery draw in Ireland ended in a high-profile scandal. Live on air, viewers saw two different numbers on the same balloon. Screenshots of the balloon went viral on the internet and users actively discussed the incident.
As a result, the country’s National Lottery Operator intervened in the scandal. In an official statement, it was explained that the number 38 was considered the winning number. And the number 33, which was seen by the audience, turned out to be a simple illusion. The culprit, according to the cameraman, was the studio lights. It was because of them that the viewers thought they saw 3 instead of 8.
The company assured that all drawings are absolutely fair and no manipulation of inventory can be made. However, most spectators did not believe such explanations.
Special balls in Pennsylvania
The story took place in 1980 and involved an American TV lottery host. He was able to fraudulently win large sums of money. Nick Perry prepared for a long time for the fraud and pulled it off with the help of other people. One of the accomplices turned out to be a member of the National Security Service who was in charge of safeguarding lottery inventory. Together the swindlers substituted all the balls except 4 and 6 for the heavier ones. Thus, the winning combination was formed only from these two numbers.
Other accomplices bought hundreds of tickets which could have been winning: 444, 446, 466, 644 and so on. In the end, the winning combination was 666. There were a lot of winning tickets, so the lottery operator paid attention to it. As a result, the truth came out and a scandal erupted. Nick and his accomplices got prison sentences and the image of the lottery was badly damaged. Interestingly, this story was the basis for the plot of the movie “lucky numbers” with John Travolta.
The Italian con
It’s well known that many areas of business in Italy are run by the mafia. Lotteries are no exception. In the 1990s, it became known that members of the Mafia group, with the assistance of the authorities for a long time implemented a scam. For more than ten years, they had been rigging lottery draws in various ways, and as a result, they were able to earn more than 110 million euros.
The Mafiosi came up with their own method of fraud after studying the rules of the Milan draw. Blindfolded children were invited into the studio to take out numbered balls one by one. The cheaters only had to tell the children which balls to take out. Various methods were used to do this. The balls were heated, cooled, specially marked and so on. For a long time, the deception went unnoticed, but it eventually undermined participants’ confidence in such lotteries.
All these stories always ended the same way: the scammers got prison sentences, lotteries lost their reputation and spectators stopped trusting such lotteries. However, such scandals don’t affect everyone. Therefore, even high-profile revelations do not stop lovers of easy profits and those who dream of multimillion-dollar winnings.