Posted on 11/15/2003 3:06:34 AM PST by SamAdams76
Lottery watchdogs are demanding a hard-and-fast policy on how to handle massive bets, as they seek answers about a mysterious Chicago man who tried to bet up to $10 million on the Mass Millions game.
Jan Saragoni, one of five commissioners who oversee the Lottery, called for more information about the money-man, whose identity the Lottery refused again to release yesterday.
``I have to say I was struck by the offer,'' Saragoni said. ``I guess I was struck by the organized manner in which this individual decided for approaching, making that kind of an offer.''
The Herald reported yesterday the Lottery already accepted a $60,000 cashier's check from the man - who returned a few days later to try to buy between 7 million and 10 million tickets, boosting his odds of hitting the $38.9 million jackpot to 50-50, up from 1 in 14 million.
Lottery board members first got wind of the massive would-be wager at a meeting Wednesday, as agency chiefs were preparing to accept it - a decision they had backed down from by Wednesday night.
Saying the lack of details made her squirm, Saragoni warned the Lottery to ``look long and hard'' before accepting huge amounts of money from unknown individuals.
``There are just too many unknowns,'' Saragoni said. ``Who was the individual? Who was he representing? What is the precedent for these kinds of bets? What impact does that have on the rest of the public? Are people encouraged or discouraged from purchasing a ticket?''
Lottery Director Joseph C. Sullivan and his boss Treasurer Timothy P. Cahill could not be reached yesterday.
The other Lottery board members - Gov. Mitt Romney's Consumer Affairs Director Beth Lindstrom, Comptroller Martin Benison and Public Safety Secretary Ed Flynn - also did not return calls for comment.
Republicans, meanwhile, had some fun at Democrat Cahill's expense, with GOP director Dominick Ianno pointing to previous Herald reports about unscratchable Lottery tickets as he cracked, ``Maybe they should have tried to unload all of those defective scratch tickets on this guy.''
This is starting to smell suspiciously like a lottery hate crime. For good measure, it should be prosecuted under the RICO statutes.
What you say is true. However, the lottery is based on participation by the small buyer participants. If they are discouraged from playing because of these large block of tickets players, revenue will decrease.
I support placing an upper limit on the number of tickets purchased in a block, or I won't play.
However there should be an investigation of the man who somehow wound up with two winning tickets out of three in a 70 million dollar lotto.
Exactly! The lottery is known as a tax on stupidity. Especially on the daily 3 digit number drawings. The payoff is horrible. A thousand to one odds only pays 500 to one on your dollar wagered. Donald Trump would LOVE to have those meager payouts in his casinos!
WRONG! Of course it does. Lets review. For the sake of discussion lets say there are 5 numbers between 1 and 10 (actually there are way more, but this makes the math easy). That means there are a total of 10 to the 5th power possible winning choices. Or odds of 1 in 100,000 if you buy a single $1 ticket. Now if you buy 10 $1 tickets you have improved your odds to 10 in 100,000 (assuming they are unique combinations, of course). If you buy 100,000 unique tickets you have guaranteed that you will win the lottery!
This could be a good investment if it is a progressive lottery, as most are. Say the lotto returns 50% to players. The prize grows with each week no one hits the jackpot. Eventually it gets up to several times the cost of buying all the tickets. Now your "buy em all" strategy makes sense. You could still lose money though, because there may be several other people who have the same winning ticket, with whom you will have to split the prize.
The only downside was that it was always possible that someone also bought the winning combination, in which case you'd have to share the proceeds.
Now CA offers a "lump sum" but it is a fraction of the total payout. They also raised the odds to something like 1 in 50 million or some ridiculous number like that.
--Boris
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