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Several years ago, while doing research for a school project, a group of MIT students realized that, for a few days every three months or so, the most reliably lucrative lottery game in the country was Massachusetts' Cash WinFall, because of a quirk in the way a jackpot was broken down into smaller prizes if there was no big winner. The math whizzes quickly discovered that buying about $100,000 in Cash WinFall tickets on those days would virtually guarantee success. Buying $600,000 worth of tickets would bring a 15%–20% return on investment, according to the New York Daily News.
When the jackpot rose to $2 million, the students bought in, dividing the prize money among group members. But they didn't stop there; they were so successful in their caper that they were eventually able to quit their day jobs and bring in investors to front the money they needed to purchase the requisite number of lottery tickets.
Original Submission
(Score: 2, Interesting) by blackhawk on Tuesday June 09 2015, @06:53AM
This was done many times 30 years ago or more over here in Australia. Large syndicates full of wealthy people who didn't even need the money would wait for the jackpot to reach a given figure, and then they would cover enough numbers to ensure a win. Looks like history repeating itself.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2015, @06:59AM
And they did it deliberately to fuck over the poor, because all rich people are evil.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2015, @01:26PM
Well, yes, they are.
(Score: 1) by blackhawk on Wednesday June 10 2015, @03:03PM
Not really, they did it to make more money, and although that came at the expense of large amounts of poor people, I don't think they had evil intentions, only the intention to increase their wealth. They simply didn't consider how this action would affect other people. It's a form of ignorance rather than evil.