Scams and frauds
Lottery,
like any form of gambling, is susceptible to fraud, despite the high degree
of scrutiny claimed by the organizers. One method involved is to tamper with
the machine used for the number selection. By rigging a machine, it is
theoretically easy to win a lottery. This act is often done in connivance
with an employee of the lottery firm. Methods used vary; loaded balls where
select balls are made to pop-up making it either lighter or heavier than the
rest.In some US states, such as Kansas and Minnesota, losing lottery tickets can be mailed in for a raffle of special prizes. The trouble with that is that employees of stores that sell lottery tickets sometimes collect the lottery tickets that are thrown away and send them in. As a lottery official put it "The retailers have an unlimited supply of free tickets. You do not need to be an FBI agent to realize that is a tremendously unfair advantage."[1]
Some advance fee fraud scams on the Internet are based on lotteries. The fraud starts with spam congratulating the recipient on their recent lottery win. The email explains that in order to release funds the email recipient must part with a certain amount (as tax/fees) as per the rules or risk forfeiture.
Another form of lottery scam involves the selling of "systems" which purport to improve a player's chances of selecting the winning numbers in a Lotto game. These scams are generally based on the buyer's (and perhaps the seller's) misunderstanding of probability and random numbers. Sale of these systems or software is legal, however, since they mention that the product cannot guarantee a win, let alone a jackpot. Several companies offer a service where they will buy tickets for online clients in any of dozens of countries otherwise inaccesible to them, for a massive mark up, of many hundred per cent. Some national and international lotteries have residency and minimum age requirements.
There have also been several cases of cashiers at gas & convenience stores who have attempted to scam customers out of their winnings. Some locations require the patron to hand the lottery ticket to the cashier to determine how much they have won, or if they have won at all, the cashier then scans the ticket to determine one or both. In cases where there is no visible or audible cue to the patron of the outcome of the scan some cashiers have taken the opportunity to claim that the ticket is a loser or that it is worth far less than it is and offer to "throw it away" or surreptitiously substitute it for another ticket. The cashier then pockets the ticket and eventually claims it as their own.[2]
References
- ^ J. Eidsmoe (1994). Vital Issues Pr.. pp. 154. ISBN 978-1563840715.
- ^ "How Luck can you get". MSNBC.
