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 * The Triple Six Fix
 * The Lottery Insider
 * A Scam that Came with a Scandal
 * The 5-Minute Loophole


4 LOTTERY SCANDALS THAT ROCKED THE INDUSTRY

By Nicholas Christensen
Last Updated: May 6, 2021

The lottery industry has its fair share of scandals—which isn’t really a
surprise. It may be a big industry with numerous protections in place, but it’s
not perfect. From stealing, to fixing results, and even exploiting loopholes,
people will do anything to cheat the lottery and fatten their bank
accounts—risking everything including jail time. Read on to learn about some of
the biggest lottery scandals that rocked the industry!

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THE TRIPLE SIX FIX

This is probably the most infamous lottery scandal of all time—not because of
how much money masterminds Nick Perry and his cohorts, the Maragos brothers,
walked away with, but because of how crafty they were. What they did was so
impressive that Hollywood took notice and made a movie about them, Lucky
Numbers, starring John Travolta and Lisa Kudrow. So, what did they do to merit
this kind of attention?

A promo shot from Lucky Numbers, the movie adaptation of the Triple Six Fix
lottery scandal.



Nick Perry was a radio personality and host of Pittsburgh’s nightly televised
lottery drawing on WTAE Channel 4 in the 70’s and 80’s. Along with brothers
Peter and Jack Maragos, they concocted a plan that would use weighted lottery
balls. The idea was simple, but quite clever: they would add just enough weight
to the balls, except for 4’s and 6’s, to limit the numbers that would be drawn
by the lotto machine. Doing so would leave them with only 8 possible number
combinations: 444, 446, 464, 466, 644, 646, 664, and 666.

To accomplish this, Perry and his cohorts needed the help of an expert. They
turned to local lettering expert and WTAE art director Joseph Bock for help with
creating the weighted balls. Bock used ping-pong balls and experimented with
various powders and substances until he settled on latex paint. But it wasn’t as
simple as slathering the balls with a coat of paint and calling it a day—Bock
had to determine the precise amount to put so that the weighted balls could be
lifted from the bottom of the machine, but not enough to be completely sucked
out by the vacuum tube. Eventually, Bock got the right formula.

With that hurdle out of the way, all Perry had to do was to get access to the
lottery machines and the ping-pong balls. Easier said than done, right? Not for
Perry. Remember, he was the TV host of the three-ball Philadelphia lottery draw.
Of course, he still needed help—which lottery official Edward Plevel and WTAE
stagehand Fred Luman happily provided. Plevel left the machine and balls
unguarded, while Luman switched the balls before and after the drawing. Bock
would later burn the balls in his studio a half-hour after the drawing.



The draw went according to plan—one of the 8 possible combinations, 666, came
up—but because of unusual betting patterns detected by authorities and local
bookmakers, plus an anonymous tip, Perry and his cohorts were caught red-handed.
Perry and his accomplices were arrested, and the winnings were never paid out,
with Perry maintaining his innocence ‘til the day he passed away in 2003.




THE LOTTERY INSIDER

Fast forward to 2017 and to the world of computer fraud for our next scandal. In
plain sight, programmer Eddie Tipton gamed the system he helped design. No ball
tampering for him!

Eddie Tipton worked as the security director of the Multi-State Lottery
Association (MUSL), a nonprofit agency that oversees numerous lotteries all over
the United States. As you can imagine, this position granted him access to
places no ordinary civilian could go—one of which was the Iowa Lottery’s highly
secured “Draw Room.”

Eddie Tipton in an interview.



It was here where Tipton, with a background in IT and expertise in cyber
security, would tamper with the room’s CCTV system so that it would only record
roughly a second of footage per minute. With that out of the way, Tipton
installed a self-destructing root-kit program that would essentially allow him
to predict the numbers of certain lottery games without a single trace.

With the help of his brother Tommy and close friend, Texas businessman Robert
Rhodes, for years, the trio enriched themselves without anyone noticing. From
2005-2011, in Colorado, Wisconsin, Kansas, Iowa and Oklahoma, they pocketed the
winnings. It would’ve been the perfect crime too, had it not been for Eddie’s
slip-up. What eventually made authorities suspicious was when, in December 2010,
a lawyer tried to claim the Hot Lotto jackpot—worth $16.5 million—on behalf of a
corporation registered in Belize.

Warning bells went off when the trust that the lawyer represented withdrew the
claim when asked to identify the original ticket purchaser (Iowa doesn’t allow
anonymity for lottery winners). It turned out that none other than Eddie Tipton
himself bought that winning ticket—and he was caught on security footage!

The security footage that caused Eddie Tipton's downfall.

It was the beginning of the end for Tipton, but he didn’t give up without a
fight. For more than two years of adamantly denying his involvement in the
crime—even going so far as claiming that the Hot Lotto lottery was pinning
everything on him because they were desperate—Eddie Tipton finally pleaded
guilty in 2017. He currently faces up to 25 years in prison.




A SCAM THAT CAME WITH A SCANDAL

Here’s a scam that could have come straight out of a British detective series.
Calling Inspector Morse, Inspector Lewis and the Happy Valley’s Sergeant Cawood!
This isn’t about insiders (although there is some element of an inside man)
taking advantage of their position to rig lottery results—it’s more about a
broken system that inadvertently allowed someone to take advantage. And
ultimately ended up in tragedy.

In 2009, after no one came forward to claim the £2.5 million National Lottery
prize in Britain, Edward Putman, a convicted rapist, was allegedly tipped off
about the exact details of the winning ticket by Giles Knibbs, his contact
working at Camelot’s fraud detection department which is the operator of the
National Lottery.

Edward Putman hiding under his hood.

Putman went to a shop, purchased a ticket, and proceeded to carefully scratch
off the barcode and date. The barmy part? That’s all Putman did! He didn’t even
attempt to replace the barcode or dates to make the ticket look authentic.

The even crazier part? Dame Dianne Thompson, the Camelot chief executive at the
time, is said to have personally called Putman right before authorizing the
release of the £2.5million payout without even questioning why the winning
ticket looked like it was deliberately tampered with.

Putman was later arrested but was let go due to lack of evidence. It was
reported that Camelot itself was partly to blame for his release; they claim to
have lost the “winning” ticket. It wasn’t much of a surprise when the Gambling
Commission slapped Camelot with a hefty £3 million fine for authorizing the
payout in the first place.

It doesn’t end here. Putnam had the audacity to apply for welfare benefits after
pocketing his winnings but was denied in 2012. And in 2015, Giles Knibbs
committed suicide amidst allegations of the lottery fraud.




THE 5-MINUTE LOOPHOLE

Edward Putman might have gotten off without so much as a slap on the wrist in
Britain, but if he were in China, things would be a lot different. Just ask Zhao
Liqun, who is currently facing a life sentence for using a loophole he
discovered to his advantage.

Liqun ran three lottery stalls in the province of Anhan in China, but was also
an avid lottery player himself. And like any other lottery player, he was trying
to find ways to easily secure a win. One day, he succeeded. He found out that
after the winning numbers were drawn, there was a five-minute window wherein
anyone can still choose numbers and purchase a legitimate lottery ticket (this
time containing the winning numbers).

According to the Intermediate People's Court of Anhan, Zhao's victim was the
Welfare Lottery's “3D” system.

It was a pretty clever scheme, and Liqun would have gotten away with it if only
he learned the importance of quitting while he was ahead. He took advantage of
this trick a total of three times, raking in a total of $3.76 million or 28
million yuan.

Liqun asked friends and family to cash in the succeeding tickets—most likely
because he was trying to hide his involvement. Unfortunately for him,
authorities soon caught on to the scheme. Not only was he imprisoned for life—a
sentence viewed upon by many as being too harsh—all of his property was also
confiscated.


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