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Maybe MIT should stand for "muggers in training."
Ten years after a group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology students and a professor famously took Las Vegas casinos to the cleaners counting cards, a new gambling scandal has arisen that involves MIT: a researcher and a group of students scammed the Massachussets Lottery.
Worse though, is that the Massachusetts Lottery knew they were doing it and chose to share in the windfall instead of protecting the integrity of the game.
The math whizzes were looking for a unique school project when a couple of them figured out that it would only take about $100,000 in tickets to guarantee success in the Cash WinFall game. When the jackpot rose to $2 million or more, group members bought in and shared in the prize money. By 2005, the group had earned about $8 million in winnings, reported the Boston Globe.
Despite an obvious conflict of interest in knowing that the game was compromised, officials continued to allow hundreds of thousands of $2 tickets to be bought by the merry band of thieves, the paper reported.
Here's how the scheme worked: If the jackpot in a lottery game isn't won, it usually is held over to the next drawing, creating a larger jackpot. In Cash WinFall the jackpot was capped at $2 million. When no one matched all the numbers, the jackpot would be redistributed - "rolled down" to make lesser prizes 5 to 10 times greater than usual, reported the Globe.
The game was so lucrative for the students, that they gave up jobs to stick it to the system on a full-time basis. Additionally, they were backed by investors who shared in the profits, according to a report by State Inspector General Gregory Sullivan cited by the paper.
Buying $600,000 worth of tickets virtually guaranteed a 15-20 percent return on investment. The initial premise was proven by James Harvey, who turned $1,000 in tickets into $3,000 Feb. 7, 2005. He immediately made the "project" larger, forming Random Strategies Investments and spending hours filling out betting slips and lining up eager financers. Within a few years, more groups popped up, but the MIT group figured out how to win the whole jackpot in a single drawing by 2010, reported the paper.
In an email discovered by the paper, a lottery supervisor shamelessly asks ""How do I become part of the club when I retire?"
【新闻快讯】
自10年前麻省理工的教授和学生横扫拉斯维加斯赌场后，今天他们又开始转战麻省彩票业。可悲的是，麻省的彩票业界即便知道麻省战团的动作，也无法横加干涉。据《波士顿全球》报道，由于彩票业是属于奖金累积制度，只要累积奖金总额一到200万美元，他们就开始大肆买入彩票，如此赚取奖金，对此彩票业界只能放任自流，无法干涉。
麻省名校高才利用所学，在彩坛大肆榨取巨额奖金。而眼见此行业如此红利满满，另一些学生也辞掉了原本的工作，全身心投入其中。由他们背后的投资人出资，他们运用所学，共享其利。根据测算，买足60万美金的彩票就能转回成本，而且还能赚回百分之15-20的回报。学生中还有有能者成立了风投战略公司用以运营操作。短短几年数家公司如雨后春笋般冒了出来，专业寻求短期高回报的投资方案。难怪连彩票业监管人都眼红这样的收入，想着退休以后也要加入这样的阵营呢！ |
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发表于 2016-7-28 13:18:01