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I have trouble understanding how winning the lottery this often doesn't immediately raise red flags for fraud. Is there some reason that people might buy winnin

I have trouble understanding how winning the lottery this often doesn't immediately raise red flags for fraud. Is there some reason that people might buy winning lottery tickets?

brunoqc 9y ago
> Is there some reason that people might buy winning lottery tickets? Money laundering maybe. It wouldn't make much sense for the seller.
aetherson 9y ago
The article suggests that people who owe back taxes or certain legal fees would have their winnings garnished. So they find a "clean" ostensible winner to claim the winnings, presumably paying him or her a smaller fee.
danso 9y ago
IIRC, from a NICAR listserv discussion with the Florida reporter, it's not that the claimed winners actually bought the tickets from the ticket dispensers. It's that the actual purchasers of the winning ticket sell it to these frequent buyers at a slight discount, so that they (the actual purchasers) don't have a financial paper trail. Not necessarily for tax purposes (the second-hand buyer would have to eventually pay for that), but for things like child support and divorce alimony. Searched through my old emails and here are a couple of excerpts (from Mower, and various other reporters responding to the thread): > "Once we zeroed in on these "prolific" winners, we discovered other bizarre patterns. They were winning from dozens of stores across multiple counties, would start their winning streaks out of the blue (versus spotty wins over a long period of time) and most were owners or clerks at places that sold tickets (we had to do that research on our own)." > A lot of tickets are second-hand, which may well be illegal and is probably often used as a dodge around child-support payments edit: In terms of why it doesn't raise red flags, it's because in most bureaucratic systems, there just aren't red flags built into databases and record-keeping. Florida is probably by far one of the best states in terms of transparent and computer/machine-readable recordkeeping, but someone has to have the initiative to do the analysis, even if it's just a simple SQL query. From an unrelated investigation from another Florida outlet about bad cops getting rehired: https://ire.org/blog/on-the-road/2011/12/20/behind-story-tracking-police/ https://ire.org/blog/on-the-road/2011/12/20/behind-story-tra... > This was a case where the government had this wonderful, informative dataset and they weren’t using it at all except to compile the information. I remember talking to one person at an office and saying: “How could you guys not know some of this? In five minutes of (SQL) queries you know everything about these officers?” They basically said it wasn't their job. That left a huge opportunity for us. edit 2: In the case of the original Florida story by the Palm Beach Post, it appears that the actual problem was that clerks were actively deceiving and stealing from the winners: http://archives.cjr.org/united_states_project/palm_beach_post_ferrets_out_florida_lottery_fraud.php http://archives.cjr.org/united_states_project/palm_beach_pos... > The stores that sell lottery tickets in Florida all have a machine that will scan a ticket and determine if it’s a winner. People who buy the tickets bring them back to stores to see if they’ve won. But they’re often relying on the store clerks to tell the truth about what the machine says. So the clerks can tell the buyer, “Hey, sorry man, better luck next time,” and then pocket the guy’s winning ticket. In other states, the problem is money laundering.
jlgaddis 9y ago
See the "real article" [0] that this one links to; it lists several. [0]: http://www.pennlive.com/watchdog/2017/09/defying_the_odds_part_1.html http://www.pennlive.com/watchdog/2017/09/defying_the_odds_pa...

I have trouble understanding how winning the lottery this often doesn't immediately raise red flags for fraud. Is there some reason that people might buy winning lottery tickets?

brunoqc 9y ago

> Is there some reason that people might buy winning lottery tickets? Money laundering maybe. It wouldn't make much sense for the seller.

aetherson 9y ago

The article suggests that people who owe back taxes or certain legal fees would have their winnings garnished. So they find a "clean" ostensible winner to claim the winnings, presumably paying him or her a smaller fee.

danso 9y ago

IIRC, from a NICAR listserv discussion with the Florida reporter, it's not that the claimed winners actually bought the tickets from the ticket dispensers. It's that the actual purchasers of the winning ticket sell it to these frequent buyers at a slight discount, so that they (the actual purchasers) don't have a financial paper trail. Not necessarily for tax purposes (the second-hand buyer would have to eventually pay for that), but for things like child support and divorce alimony. Searched through my old emails and here are a couple of excerpts (from Mower, and various other reporters responding to the thread): > "Once we zeroed in on these "prolific" winners, we discovered other bizarre patterns. They were winning from dozens of stores across multiple counties, would start their winning streaks out of the blue (versus spotty wins over a long period of time) and most were owners or clerks at places that sold tickets (we had to do that research on our own)." > A lot of tickets are second-hand, which may well be illegal and is probably often used as a dodge around child-support payments edit: In terms of why it doesn't raise red flags, it's because in most bureaucratic systems, there just aren't red flags built into databases and record-keeping. Florida is probably by far one of the best states in terms of transparent and computer/machine-readable recordkeeping, but someone has to have the initiative to do the analysis, even if it's just a simple SQL query. From an unrelated investigation from another Florida outlet about bad cops getting rehired: https://ire.org/blog/on-the-road/2011/12/20/behind-story-tracking-police/ https://ire.org/blog/on-the-road/2011/12/20/behind-story-tra... > This was a case where the government had this wonderful, informative dataset and they weren’t using it at all except to compile the information. I remember talking to one person at an office and saying: “How could you guys not know some of this? In five minutes of (SQL) queries you know everything about these officers?” They basically said it wasn't their job. That left a huge opportunity for us. edit 2: In the case of the original Florida story by the Palm Beach Post, it appears that the actual problem was that clerks were actively deceiving and stealing from the winners: http://archives.cjr.org/united_states_project/palm_beach_post_ferrets_out_florida_lottery_fraud.php http://archives.cjr.org/united_states_project/palm_beach_pos... > The stores that sell lottery tickets in Florida all have a machine that will scan a ticket and determine if it’s a winner. People who buy the tickets bring them back to stores to see if they’ve won. But they’re often relying on the store clerks to tell the truth about what the machine says. So the clerks can tell the buyer, “Hey, sorry man, better luck next time,” and then pocket the guy’s winning ticket. In other states, the problem is money laundering.

jlgaddis 9y ago

See the "real article" [0] that this one links to; it lists several. [0]: http://www.pennlive.com/watchdog/2017/09/defying_the_odds_part_1.html http://www.pennlive.com/watchdog/2017/09/defying_the_odds_pa...