How a Secretive Gambler Called 'The Joker' Took Down the Texas Lottery 71
A global gambling syndicate led by secretive Tasmanian gambler Zeljko Ranogajec and London bookmaker Bernard Marantelli successfully executed an unprecedented operation to claim a $57.8 million Texas lottery jackpot in 2023.
The group, operating through a limited partnership called Rook TX, purchased 99.3% of all possible number combinations, printing over 25 million tickets across four makeshift workshops in Texas. Using dozens of official lottery terminals and working nearly around the clock for three days, the team systematically printed hundreds of tickets per second.
Texas officials have since launched investigations, with Lt. Governor Dan Patrick calling it "the biggest theft from the people of Texas in the history of Texas." The Texas Rangers are now investigating the operation. Through legal representation, the syndicate maintains they "followed all applicable laws, rules and regulations" throughout the process.
The group, operating through a limited partnership called Rook TX, purchased 99.3% of all possible number combinations, printing over 25 million tickets across four makeshift workshops in Texas. Using dozens of official lottery terminals and working nearly around the clock for three days, the team systematically printed hundreds of tickets per second.
Texas officials have since launched investigations, with Lt. Governor Dan Patrick calling it "the biggest theft from the people of Texas in the history of Texas." The Texas Rangers are now investigating the operation. Through legal representation, the syndicate maintains they "followed all applicable laws, rules and regulations" throughout the process.
Theft? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Theft? (Score:5, Insightful)
My thoughts exactly, where did the theft happen?
It seems much more like a screw up on the part of the Lotto company to me that someone finally took advantage of.
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It may have been a terms of service violation for either the lottery itself or for the machines used to print the tickets. Civil matter, not theft.
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Re: Theft? (Score:2)
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I don't recall ever agreeing to anything when I've bought lottery tickets (other than I'm the age I claim to be), so good luck with some type of contract law claim.
There are contract requirements to sell lotto tickets.
They opened businesses selling lotto tickets (thus agreed to the contract terms) to sell themselves the tickets -likely in violation of the contract terms.
The tickets they purchased via special arrangements with existing retailers were sold to them in violation of the contract terms that the existing retailers had agreed to.
The state may be able to win a judgement that the winnings are invalid because of this.
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no they entered arrangements with authorized lotto ticket sellers to use their machines in accordance with the lotto guidelines. literal 24/7 arrangements where they stayed open/operating their printers. Like, "Here's $5K... stock up on your lotto paper for your machines..."
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It would have been a very poorly designed contract if it allowed them to do that. Most lotteries don't allow bulk purchases and don't allow the machines to be used in that way.
Re: Theft? (Score:3, Insightful)
Buying individual tickets isn't 'bulk buying' - what the lottery should do is offer a single "super" ticket, that is a guaranteed winner since it covers every possible combination... it would simultaneously put an upper limit on ticket sales, and each such ticket sold would add 50% of the ticket revenue to the prize pool.
There are just over 300 million ticket combinations in the mega millions lottery.
Tickets cost $3/ea ($2 for ticket, $1 for multiplier)
So if the lottery offered a $900M single lottery ticket
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Lottery ticket sales go way up as the jackpot goes up, so to maximize sales they want the jackpot to not be hit for as long as (reasonably) possible.
Having a mechanism where the jackpot resets as soon as it passes the break-even point would cause it to miss out on a substantial amount of revenue.
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Although, there's an interesting game-theory aspect if they did sell "super" tickets.
Due to the potential for selling more than one super ticket, they're not a safe bet: spending $300M to buy the $400M jackpot sounds good until you have to split it with the other orgs thinking the same thing.
But then other orgs would have the same worry, so if nobody else thought it was worth the risk then suddenly that $300M is money well spent. But other orgs would have that thought too.
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The orgs would band together and buy a single super ticket and split the cost.
The contract better be ironclad, because I figure you're going to need much more legalese than a casual lottery pool.
Re: Theft? (Score:3)
I assume the lottery agency saw the increased orders for both lottery machines AND the special paper rolls the tickets are printed on - hard to be surprised in my opinion.
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So something illegal may have happened, just not necessarily the type of theft claim the governor is making? That seems much more plausible.
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It sounds like more of a contract violation than a criminal act.
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From TFS:
Using dozens of official lottery terminals and working nearly around the clock for three days, the team systematically printed hundreds of tickets per second.
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I was trying to find an article on Florida banning this practice, but couldn't. I remember some state(s) supposedly passed a law to make this practice illegal.
Maybe it didn't hold up, and that's why Florida added a bunch of numbers around 10(?) years ago to make it infeasible.
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I believe they also changed the payouts for the lesser awards (5 of 6, 4 of 6, etc.). Initially, they were proportional to the pool, but they're now fixed figures, at least for Mega.
I remember a similar thing being tried in FL, only I don't think they had the dedicated lotto terminals. Must've been fun.
"Idiocracy" was optimistic (Score:4, Funny)
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Texas is just mad because they're innumerate.
Yeah, but they can't count!
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It seems this was all done above board. I think Texas is just sore because they figured nobody would actually do this.
Yeah, but he was so good he apparently did it twice [slashdot.org].
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Texas doesn't want people to stop buying lottery tickets in the future, that is all.
Small chance of loss (Score:2)
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according to the article, they excluded those numbers because they didn't want to split the jackpots and I guess the math somehow made sense.
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Assume the numbers in a lottery are independent and each one has an equal chance of hitting the jackpot. You can also assign each number a probability that it will be played. Dates are probably going to have the highest probability, lucky numbers, etc.
Knowing that, what the jackpot is, and the number of other players you can calculate the expected payout for each number. A number with a very low probability of being played is going to have an expected payout close to the jackpot divided by the number of num
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As I said at the beginning, the purchase of each ticket is independent, as is its expected payout. It doesn't matter how many you're buying. Thus the warning at the end that regular people buying one or a few tickets should pay attention to this as well.
Their goal isn't to win, it's to make money. Yes, if your goal is to win at all costs you should buy as many tickets as you can, regardless of how often they're played. If your goal is to make a profit, you need to (1) wait for the jackpot to get big enough
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This is the mistake you're making. Their goal is not to win. Their goal is to make money. You don't make money by buying tickets for $X that are worth $(X-Y).
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This is the mistake you're making. Their goal is not to win. Their goal is to make money. You don't make money by buying tickets for $X that are worth $(X-Y).
I think you fail to understand what they did. This has nothing to do with buying maximum expected value potential winning tickets. They were pursuing a risk reduction strategy, which involves purchasing every ticket to ensure they would have the winning ticket, which as long as it was the only winning ticket they were assured of a profit. Some tickets certainly had a higher expected value given they were less likely to be played, but only playing them did not assure them they would have a winning ticket, on
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A followup after reading your reply to the the AC: it does seem weird that they excluded such a small percentage of the tickets. That could be a mistake, or maybe it was because an adult was in charge. Bookmakers are a combination of actuary and accountant. Want to buy unprofitable tickets FOR THE GLORY? No. Or perhaps they had a set protocol before they started that forbade such things, which is always a good idea when you're gambling.
I think the most likely reason though is that they suspected (correctly
AGAIN? Didn't he do this last week? (Score:4, Insightful)
Dupe!
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Dupe (Score:2)
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Lottery Is Theft (Score:5, Insightful)
Lotteries are theft. Period. It's an idiot tax. The main reason they're upset is if people start to lose faith; they'll lose the idiot tax income.
The simple fact is all they did was buy most of the possible combinations. What's illegal about that? Did they steal tickets? Did they not pay for the ones they printed? It sounds like they just legally gamed the system. This is exactly the type of behavior they should support as it's exactly what republican states do all the time. Sometimes we call it malicious compliance.
But that doesn't change the fact lottery is theft to start with; and I sure as fuck won't cry about people scamming a scam.
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Republican is code for dick tater. Gambling is a sin according to two faced white republican christians. Yet, Hot Wheels is all of those and we have legal gambling.
Hypocrisy at it's finest.
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I love the governors new nickname. People clutching their pearls about that while they cheered at orange jesus making fun of a disabled person. https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]
It's not new. Texas democrats (and indie-news article writers) have been using that disability slur against him for at least 10 years. It's not some moral-equivalence latter day reaction to Trump's crassness. Both situations are examples of grown adults choosing to use cruel humor about other people to accomplish political goals. And now we're at the 4th grade playground-fight level where both sides are pretending to clutch pearls at the other side pretending to clutch pearls at the other side's pearl-clutc
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Lotteries are theft. Period. It's an idiot tax.
I don't see how it's theft if it's a voluntary purchase and the terms are disclosed to the purchaser before purchase.
It may be an idiot tax, but if we call it "theft", then a $6 coffee at Starbucks is also theft, because you can get something equivalent much cheaper somewhere else.
For your $1, you get a lottery ticket with an expectation value of $.90 (or whatever), plus the thrill of imagining yourself winning a lot of money. I don't consider that worthwhile, but some people do, and it's their money to (m
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In other words you believe Usury doesn't exist if the slave was forced to enter into the contract in order to eat.
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In other words you believe Usury doesn't exist if the slave was forced to enter into the contract in order to eat.
I don't follow; the discussion was about lottery tickets, not usurious loans. Are you suggesting that people are being forced to buy lottery tickets in order to keep themselves fed? Or are you having a separate imaginary discussion in your head that is unrelated to anything I posted?
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Suppose you say "I'll punch you in the face for $5" and I say "ok!" So you punch me in the face. Ouch! That hurts. And then I hand you $5.
Was that theft?
Or am I just an idiot?
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Ask the Bum Fights guy... I think they didn't like it.
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Re:Lottery Is Theft (Score:4, Informative)
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You could add a line on your state's tax form saying "donate a dollar to X fund" and net more money, even if only 5% checked the box, but i suppose someone's friend would lose their job in the lottery commission.
they used some of their children that may be all (Score:2)
they used some of their children that may be all TX needs to void the win and keep the cash paid in.
Spirit vs letter of law again (Score:4, Insightful)
Little fish have the spirit of the law applied to them. Big fish explain why they are screwing you by exactly adhering to the letter of the law while violating the spirit of it.
If little fish do so, its cheating and brings out the we-need-a-law people.
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This is silly. If they hadn't won, or if they'd had to split the jackpot, the story would be laughing at the idiots who spent millions of dollars printing all the tickets and managed to lose money making the jackpot bigger for Joe Random.
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There's nothing here violating the spirit of the law. You sound like the kind of person who is upset at losing a card game because the other player is better at it than you.
Was it really though? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Was it really though? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah was wondering what exactly the state is so up in arms about. Unless they so badly structured the lottery such the jackpots (I understand their rolling) exceeded the ticket sales income, how did it function other than as designed. At most the 'loss' is a little interest they State might have earned had it taken a few more months for someone to hit payout.
About the only argument I see is that people play lotto because "it could be me" is fun. If people see the prize going to out-of-state-professional-gamblers, it undermines the sense possibility and it may cause fewer people to play in the future.
I'll buy a ticket once in a while when I hear the jackpot has grown especially large; but only just one. I figure the first one makes me infinitely more likely to be the winner, but the subsequent ones make almost no difference at all.
Add another digit. (Score:2)
Did Texas bring in the tax revenue? (Score:2)
If so, nothing was stolen from the People of Texas. If Texas somehow didn't get the tax revenue and other profits from the lottery system, then they should hire smarter people to run the lottery.
I guess all lotto is theft then... (Score:2)
if someone winning the lotto is theft, then all wins are theft cause it's not like a 'normal' winner is taking the lotto jackpot and spending it ONLY in Texas (or wherever the lotto is for) and on Texas goods and services. All lottos do (in the best case) is consolidate wealth to a single individual.
Are the lottery organizers dumb? (Score:2)
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The 'casino' did not lose. Neither did anyone else.
This is one of those lotteries where if no one wins they roll over the winnings to the next one.
In cases like this, the casino does not lose, but the odds actually go into your favor of playing. That is, when you buy one of each number you are guaranteed of winning.
The people that talk about lotteries being idiot taxes do not seem to understand that this kind of lottery becomes a tax on smart people.
Note there is still risk, if enough others had done the
i don't understand (Score:3)