In this Free-for-all-Friday, Trent shares how different people have figured out tricks to both legally and illegally win lotteries.
Transcript:
Welcome to the Council of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Wouldn’t it be nice to win the lottery? Just have most or all of your financial problems go away? Well, it’s not going to happen, right? People just don’t win the lottery. It’s random chance. You can’t do anything about that. What if you could though?
What if you could beat the lottery? That’s what we’re going to talk about today here on the Council of Trent podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers apologist, Trent Horn. Mondays and Wednesdays, we talk apologetics and theology, how to explain and defend the Catholic faith. But on Friday we talk about whatever I want to talk about.
And today I want to talk about beating the lottery. Now, we could do an entire other episode just on the, so-called Curse of the Lottery. You’ve probably heard about that, right? That people who win the lottery, it’s the worst thing that ever happened to them. They end up becoming bankrupt, they end up being murdered or victims of crime, or they lose everything. They get addicted to drugs, and it is just awful.
And that does happen to some people who win the lottery, especially people who’ve never had a lot of money or are bad with money. If you’re bad with money, you could give someone all the money in the world and they’re still going to waste it, right? The problem isn’t the lack of money. The problem is their ability to spend it wisely.
So, it is true. There’s some people who win the lottery that it’s really bad for them because they couldn’t handle that kind of money. But it is sort of an urban legend to say that that’s a general rule for lottery winners. I remember reading a study a while back saying that while this does happen to some people, the majority of people who win lottery prizes say that they have a positive feeling about life, that they’re better off now that they’ve won the lottery versus not. Because that makes sense, right?
If you were to go online and read the stories of people who were the victims of the lottery curse, now you’ll find lists of maybe 10 or 20 people, victims of the lottery curse. Oh, look how bad their life turned out.
And that can prejudice you to think, oh, that’s everybody who wins the lottery. But think about it, especially if you factor in wins that are 1000, 5,000, $10,000, not like the big mega millions wins. But even there have probably been hundreds if not thousands of people who have won lottery prizes.
And so they’ve done studies on this, and the lotto curse is greatly overrated. So let’s talk though about how to fix the lottery. How can you possibly beat the lottery? It’s random, right? Well, in some cases you can, based on the particular system of the lottery. If it has a smaller number of combinations of four or five numbers, that drastically limits the odds versus trying to match six numbers or six numbers and a Powerball or something like that.
I think Powerball had something, what, like 80 million to one odds? Yeah, that’s just not going to happen. But there was a case, I think it was in Michigan, where a couple discovered a loophole. It was Jerry and Marge Selbee. They were a retired Michigan couple, and they ended up making $26 million from lottery games.
It was from a Michigan game called Winfall. So what would happen is that with Winfall, it was a standard lottery where it had a jackpot that would grow over time. But if the jackpot was not claimed by winner… Like with Powerball and Mega Millions, the jackpot can grow and grow and grow. It can’t even get into a billion dollars. But with Winfall, if it reached a certain level, I think it was like $5 million, the jackpot would be filtered down. It would fall down, so to speak, into the lower brackets.
So when you do the lottery, right, you do mega millions do other stuff like that. There’s the big huge prize if you get all six numbers, but in a lot of cases there’s a smaller prize if you get 3, 4, 5 numbers. You get these smaller things. So what the Selbees discovered, one day he just went to a corner store. And he’s like a mathematical prodigy. He’s really, really good at math. He can just do a lot of hard arithmetic in his head right off the bat.
And he did a calculation in his head and he realized, wait a minute. If we just bought enough tickets, statistically one of those tickets is bound to win. And if the fall down effect goes, the three or four number combinations are going to be worth… If there’s a fall down event where it reaches say, $5 million, there’s no winner, that money goes down to the lower brackets. Wait a minute. Now the lower brackets are worth enough that if you spend eight or $10,000 buying tickets… Because it’s not worth it if you’re only going to win like $2,000.
But if you can spend $8,000 on tickets and get $15,000 back, well then you’ve managed to crack the system in that regard. So here is a clip from 60 Minutes where they talk about how they discovered this.
Jon Wertheim:
But one morning in 2003, Jerry happened to walk back into the corner store and spotted a brochure for a brand new lottery game called Winfall.
Jerry always possessed what he calls a head for math. He has a bachelor’s degree in the subject from nearby Western Michigan University.
Jerry Selbee:
I read it, and by the time I was out here, I knew what the potential might be.
Jon Wertheim:
It did not take you weeks to suss this out.
Jerry Selbee:
No. No, not at all. Three minutes.
Jon Wertheim:
Three minutes, and you’ve found the loophole in the state lottery?
Jerry Selbee:
Three minutes. Found a special feature.
Trent Horn:
So Jerry and Marge ended up creating a corporation that would specifically buy out the tickets for these games. And they got the townspeople involved, that people in the town would pool their money together to communally buy these tickets and then divert the winnings equally to the towns members to help revitalize the small town. I think it was like Everett, Michigan where they’re from.
Their story was later adapted into a film a 2022 film called Jerry and Marge Go Large, where Bryan Cranston plays Jerry Selbee. And so it’s very true to what actually happened and that they were doing the game. And there was another group of people who discovered this flaw in the Michigan Winfall system, and they tried to get in on it. And so the payouts ended up being lower for both of them. It was a group of college students, I think from Harvard or from another school back east.
And they went and actually tried to intimidate Jerry to give up what he was doing to say, “Give this up. You’re not going to be able to beat us.”
And so Jerry persisted in it though, and they managed to get one more really big win before the state lottery commission basically shut everything down and said, “No, we’re not going to allow these bulk purchases for the tickets.”
And the thing is though, what they were doing is not illegal. It’s not illegal what they were doing, but a company or others, they can say this is not according to our terms and conditions of play and other elements like that. So for example, you have airlines recently, they’ve been prosecuting… Not prosecuting people, but punishing people, for skip lagging on the airline. You buy a ticket with a layover because you want to get to the layover and it’s cheaper to buy the layover to get to a city than directly flying there.
That’s not illegal to do, but an airline can say that violates our terms and conditions. If we find you doing this, we’re going to ban you from the airline, stuff like that. And so these kinds of things can also happen with lottery games, so with the certain terms and conditions that are applied. So what the Selbees were doing was not illegal, though it was eventually shut down. But they still got a huge Winfall, ha ha, pun there because the game was called Winfall, and they helped to revitalize and help a lot of the town.
And they were able to comfortably retire because they were in their sixties and they barely had enough money for retirement. And I think now they’re doing quite fine. So that is one way if you find a particular game and then beat it in that way. But you’ll notice that communally when you put more money in, you’re more likely to get more money out.
That gives rise to another way of beating the lottery, which would be the lottery syndicate, okay? So that’s the idea is basically you just get a group of people together, you pool your resources, and if your syndicate gets a winning ticket, you split it among everyone in the syndicate. It already sounds a bit skeezy, right? Because a syndicate, we normally think of crime syndicate, people getting together for something like that.
So another term would be a lottery pool, right? You do that at the office. We’re all going to put in a bunch of money into the hat. We got 200 bucks, we’re going to buy 200 lottery tickets, and if we win, we’ll split it with everybody.
Now lotteries, by the way, go back a really long time. Keno slips have been found from ancient elements of the Great Wall of China, from the Han Dynasty.
These are games have been around for a very long time, and some lottery syndicate have done quite well. The largest win from a syndicate, from a group or a lottery pool, was an anonymous Maryland syndicate known as The Three Amigos in 2013. They ended up with $218 million. After taxes, the three members of the group got $35 million each. So it might’ve been three people who each put forward a lot of money, it’s not just 10 bucks in the hat, to be able to buy a bunch of lottery tickets in hopes of winning the prize.
Though, there are risks when it comes to doing the system. There was Gary Baron. He was an Australian man who was involved in a lottery pool. And so he was working with his coworkers and he went and he took all the lotto tickets to go and win. And then the lottery came and went and he said, “Oh, there wasn’t a winning ticket in our lottery pool. Sorry, guys.”
But then people noticed that he had really expensive champagne. He was living a very lavish lifestyle, and they started to get suspicious. And then they found out that he had a winning lottery ticket. He had won the lottery, but he didn’t split any of the money with the rest of the people in the lottery pool. So he claimed, “Well, no, no, no, no. That particular ticket that won was a ticket that I bought with my own personal money outside of the lottery pool. It had nothing to do with the group of tickets that I was buying for you guys, so I don’t have to share the money with you all.”
So one of the dangers of the lottery pool, lottery syndicate, is that if you have one person that’s really trusted to go and do everything, they could easily take advantage of everyone else.
And then finally, of course, the other way to beat the lottery is just to cheat at it. Obviously you don’t want to do that because it’s illegal. You can lose the money. You can go to prison. It’s definitely not worth it. So of the methods I’m recommending here, one, I would say you don’t even try to beat the lottery. I mean, unless you have a mathematical system that’s pretty foolproof where you buy the majority of the combinations, you’re basically gambling there, and the odds are pretty in your favor, but not entirely in your favor.
Always have to be prudent. Gambling, the church teaches that gambling is not a sin. It becomes a sin though if you are risking harm to yourself or others, losing money, being imprudent in that respect. But if it’s just extra recreational funds that there’s no harm in you losing them, and you still can fulfill your obligations to support your family, to give money, to support the church, help the poor. It’s not a big deal there.
But the one thing you shouldn’t do is cheating. And there are lots of different ways that people have tried to cheat the lottery. You have stories about people who have worked at lotteries, who have tried to rig the random number generator when it puts forward the random numbers that are done. In the past, a lot of ways that lotteries were done were through random ball machines.
You remember them, right? You turn the wheel and the balls are all falling in it, and then they go down the thing and you line them all up. Or they’re in the air shooters, they get shot up in the air like little popcorn pellets, and then they go up to the top and then you pick it and you’ve got the lottery girl, seven, five. I think somebody else reads it, and she just stands there and looks pretty and puts them all in a line.
Now, one of the things where this happened, where there was a lottery fix, was on the Daily Number. This was a lottery in Pennsylvania. This was known as the 1980 Pennsylvania Lottery Scandal, also known as the Triple Six Fix.
So what happened is those who were involved in the con, they had access to the lottery machine and they waited down the other balls in the machine, except for the numbers four and six. So it was a three combinations. You have three digits that are selected. And so as it goes through, you know okay, we waited them down for this one. It’s going to be some combination of four and six. And so they go out and they bet.
And the unusual betting patterns for that night were detected. And then later people were arrested for the fraud. Here is the actual newscast of the winning night where the fix was in, and the number that ended up coming up was incredibly appropriate for the evil act of cheating that was associated with this particular game.
Audio:
Good evening everyone. It’s time for the live drawing of the daily number. Thursday, April 24th, 1980. Each of our three machines contains 10 balls, number zero to nine. We’ll draw one digit for each machine. Now, mix the balls in the first machine, please. And the second. And now the third machine.
Drawing tonight will be senior citizen Violet Lowry. Our supervising Pennsylvania State Lottery security official is district manager Ed Plevel. And now, Violet, draw the first digit please. Six.
And the second digit. Six.
And now the third digit. Six.
And there you have it. Today’s Pennsylvania lottery daily number. That’s six, six, six.
Trent Horn:
Six, six, six. And then it turns out it was a fraud. So there you have it. Different ways to beat the lottery. You can be an honest person with math, you can take your chance on the honesty of others in a syndicate, or be a dishonest person and try to cheat at the lottery. Of course, something one should never do.
Thank you guys so much and hope you have a very blessed weekend.
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