Casino Lottery Promo Scam
State lotteries around the country, as well as the Multi-State Lottery Association (MUSL), go to great extents to ensure that their lotteries are fair and on the up-and-up.
But no matter how much you plan, there’s always an unknown quantity that can throw everything into disarray.
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- Michigan Lottery Online – 100% Always Win or 100% Scam? Lottery players in Michigan seemed to have cracked the code to winning every time. Sounds hard to believe right! This clip not only features players winning but even exposes the game that critics are calling “scamming the lottery”.
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I remember as a kid growing up in Massachusetts, the lottery consisted of a game aptly called The Game. It featured 3 sets of numbers printed on a special ticket. The numbers had 3 digits in the first box, which I believe was white, 2 in the 2nd box which was blue and a single digit in the 3rd box which was yellow.
If you matched all 3 sets of numbers to what was drawn, you won $50,000 (which in today’s money is about $310,000).
But that wasn’t all. If you matched the single digit box, you could mail in your ticket for a chance to win $50,000 on the Massachusetts Lottery game show Big Money.
The game and show remained popular through the early 1980s when the pre-printed tickets were no longer a sound investment for the Massachusetts Lottery and they changed over to computer terminals to print tickets as they were purchased.
Today, instead of a weekly lottery we have 3 bi-weekly lotteries in most states. Sometimes there are 2 bi-weekly lotteries on the same day in the same state.
With that many games to keep track of and billions of dollars at stake, you can see why it would make an attractive target for scammers.
1 – Jerry and Marge Selbee
Not all scams are illegal or immoral. Take the case of Jerry and Marge Selbee for example.
As retired couple has been the talk of the lottery world since a 60 Minutes story that aired in early 2019 told of how they used math to beat not 1 but 2 lotteries.
The octogenarians ran a local convenience store in Evart, Michigan until roughly 15 years ago when they sold it and retired.
One day in 2003 Jerry went to the old store that he used to own and saw that a new game from the Michigan Lottery was coming out called Winfall.
Now, Jerry wasn’t just the retired proprietor of a small town convenience store. He had a degree in mathematics.
Jerry read the rules for the new game and within minutes realized that mathematically it was flawed and favored the players. He saw an opportunity.
Casino Lottery Promo Scam Alert
The game worked like this: the winnings rolled down every time the jackpot reached the cap of $5 million. Unlike lottery games like Powerball, where the jackpot keeps growing until someone matches every single number, with Winfall, when the jackpot reached $5 million with no winning ticket, all 6 winning numbers, people with tickets that had 5, 4, and 3 winning numbers could cash in.
Where the average person wouldn’t necessarily see it Jerry figured out that it was just basic math and he thought others would see it too, but he was wrong.
When Winfall started Jerry played close attention to the jackpots. When he saw the first roll-down was about to happen, he purchased $3,600 in tickets. The result was that he won $6,300.
The next roll-down, Jerry purchased $8,000 in tickets and won nearly $16,000.
Jerry didn’t tell his wife at first, but soon let her in on the secret.
Soon Jerry and Marge were betting with hundreds of thousands of dollars and win significant prizes.
The 2 were seeing such success that they formed a company, GS Investment Strategies, and invited family and then friends to buy into the business.
In 2005, Michigan discontinued Winfall because sales were low.
However, a friend of theirs who had invested in the company happened to live in Massachusetts.
The friend called Jerry and told him of a new game from the Massachusetts Lottery called Cash WinFall.
Jerry went on the Massachusetts Lottery website and read the rules and how the game worked and within 10 minutes he knew that it was essentially the same game.
From 2005 to 2011, Jerry and Marge would monitor the jackpot from Michigan and when the roll-down was about to happen, they made the 14-hour drive from their home to Massachusetts to buy their tickets.
They limited their purchases to 2 conveniences stores and would rent a room at a Red Roof Inn to sort the insane amount of tickets they would buy.
A reporter from the Boston Globe was doing a story on the lottery and discovered that a few locations were selling a massive number of Cash WinFall tickets.
After some investigation, the report found that 2 groups, a group of students from MIT (the school famous for exploiting casinos by forming companies to count cards in blackjack games) and the Selbees.
The state lottery commission and the attorney general launched an investigation to get to the heart of the matter and to determine if any criminal activities took place. After all, this was normally something you would see from an organized crime syndicate.
After an extensive investigation, the state determined that there was no illegal activity.
Unlike Michigan, Massachusetts was actually seeing large profits from the game. But due to the flaw in the game, they decided to end the game.
Over the period of 2003 to 2011, the Selbees grossed over $26 million and made $8 million in pre-tax profit.
When asked what he did with all the tickets that lost, Jerry said he saved them. The millions of losing tickets sit in hundreds of tubs in the back of his barn. He stated he saved them in case tax agents ever tried to audit him.
He acted equally as smart with his winnings. After some renovations in his house, he set up college funds for his 6 children, 14 grandchildren, and 10 great-grandchildren.
And more money will be heading Jerry and Marge’s way soon as they have sold the rights to the story and a movie will be made about their adventure.
2 – Dan Tim Poulin
In 2012, an Illinois woman contacted the Maine Lottery after receiving a message on Facebook. The message stated that she had won $40,000 in the Mega Millions game.
In the message, the woman was instructed that she could claim the prize by sending them a processing fee to expedite the transfer of the $40,000 to her account.
The message was signed by Dan Tim Poulin.
In 2019, it’s easy to see that this was a scam of monumentally simplistic proportions and the majority of people wouldn’t even read past the first line. But the world was different in 2012. Social media was relatively new and people were learning how it worked.
The scam, which the fact-checking website Snopes states had its origins as far back as 1920, was a popular email scam at the time, but it was not a common event in social media.
This led to the woman calling the Maine Lottery
She explained the letter and told them that the link in the message took her to a very realistic looking Powerball site that included the real logos and even had a list of past winners on it.
The kicker was the signature. Dan Tim Poulin.
The head of the state lottery at the time was Tim Poulin. His predecessor, who’d passed away 8 months before, was Dan Gwadowski.
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After consulting with some employees of the Maine Lottery, the woman was advised it was indeed a scam.
Poulin stated at the time “I was flabbergasted that someone would actually go through all that trouble of using my name, plus that of our former director, Dan Gwadowsky.”
He further went on to talk about the actions of the Maine Lottery with regards to winners and money: “We will never ask for money. We will never ask for any personal information in an initial contact with you. If you get an inquiry from anybody that purports to be a lottery official and they say where they are from, the best thing to do is to pick up the telephone and call the lottery office where they say that they are from. We have had people do it and hopefully, people will continue to do such.”
3 – The Store Clerk
Around the same time that the Dan Tim Poulin happened, the Maine Lottery discovered another scam that was happening in their state.
Over the last few years, this has happened a few times, but 2012 was the first time a lottery commission put out a warning on the subject.
The scam involves store clerks at lottery terminal locations. Usually, the clerk is working alone as it is easiest to pull off when no other workers are present.
A customer brings in a ticket and asks the clerk to run it through the terminal to see if there was a winner. The clerk runs the ticket and then tells the customer that it didn’t win and holds on to the ticket. In actuality, the ticket was a winner.
The Maine Lottery offered tips to prevent this from happening and 7 years later, they are still valid steps that players should take.
The tips to avoid this scam are:- Sign the ticket. This is the best safeguard against this type of fraud. If a ticket is signed, only the person who’s signature matches can claim the prize on the ticket.
- All machines are equipped with a “winner sound”. While some stores may disable this sound, most do not. If you hear the sound, you’ve won and don’t let the clerk tell you otherwise.
- Ask for a printed receipt of the ticket scan. All transactions have a printed receipt. This is because winners need to be accounted for. The process usually involves stapling a winning ticket to the receipt but losing tickets print receipts also. All lotteries do this.
- Use a location that has security cameras that work. Most stores nowadays have this, but some mom and pop shops in rural areas and some stores in need of refurbishment may not have functioning cameras or any cameras. Having the transaction on video can assist the lottery commission and the owner from rooting out any shenanigans.
- Use a “self-service” checker. This is a scanner that you can use yourself. Most states have these scanners
- Report suspicious behavior to the lottery commission. Their goal is to keep everything above board because it can mean billions for your state. The integrity of the game is the highest priority.
4 – The Hot Lotto Fraud Case
Eddie Tipton was an employee of the Multi-State Lottery Association (MUSL). He was an information security director for the organization and was in charge of developing the algorithms for many random number generators (RNG) that selected the winning lottery numbers across the Midwest.
Eddie knew the ins and outs of the RNGs and could predict the winning lottery numbers fairly accurately.
As an employee of MUSL, Eddie was prohibited by law and by his contract with the organization from playing in any lottery that MUSL worked with.
But he had an idea. He knew he was banned from the lottery, but friends and family weren’t.
In 2005, Tipton enlisted his brother Tommy, a Texas Justice of the Peace, to see if they could get away with winning a prize. Eddie had constructed the RNG for the Colorado lottery and Eddie gave Tommy the winning numbers before they were drawn. Tommy won and enlisted a friend to claim the ticket in his name to avoid implicating Eddie. Tommy offered the friend 10% of the winnings. The prize totaled $568,990.
Seeing how successful he was in Colorado, Eddie struck again in 2007. This time it was in Wisconsin. Eddie made a deal with Texas businessman Robert Rhodes to buy a ticket in the Wisconsin Lottery. Eddie provided the winning number to Rhodes who claimed the $783,257 prize via a limited liability corporation that he established specifically to claim the prize and conceal his identity. When forensic accountants investigated, they found that the corporation funneled the money back to Eddie.
In December 2010, the Hot Lotto game had reached a jackpot of $16.5 million. According to the rules of the Iowa Lottery, winners have 1 year to claim any prize. 11 months after the drawing, a man named Philip Johnson from Quebec City, Canada called the Iowa Lottery to claim the prize. He stated that he was too sick to travel to Iowa to pick up the check and was hoping that it could be done via phone or mail or a combination.
Lottery personnel quizzed him on the authenticity of the ticket. He was able to provide the 15 digit verification code on the ticket, but he wasn’t able to answer other questions that authenticated his ticket ownership.
Johnson called again on December 6th stating that he was not the actual owner, but he was acting on behalf of a person who wished to remain anonymous. The anonymous man was now represented by a Trust based in Belize called Hexham Investments. He was turned away because Iowa doesn’t allow anonymity when claiming a prize.
On December 29th, with only hours to go before the ticket expired, lawyers representing Hexham and a New York City-based lawyer named Crawford Shaw presented the winning ticket at lottery headquarters. The ticket was rejected because the company name was misspelled on the ticket as “Hexam”.
2 weeks later, Shaw returned to try to claim the prize but was turned away again when he would not reveal the owners of trust. Shaw then withdrew claims to the prize and the money went back to the state lotteries.
In 2011, Eddie went for another prize. This time he enlisted another business owner from Texas named Kyle Conn. Conn crossed the border into Oklahoma and bought a ticket with the winning numbers provided by Eddie. The prize this time was $1.2 million.
The scam broke when Johnson was interviewed by Iowa authorities. Johnson, listed as Hexham’s president, spelled out the whole scam. The said that Robert Rhodes and Robert Sonfield of Sugar Land, Texas had asked him to assist in anonymously claiming the prize.
As the investigation progressed, investigators came across video footage of the purchase of the ticket. The person buying the ticket was Eddie Tipton.
Based on this, in January of 2015, Tipton was arrested and charged with 2 counts of fraud for attempting to illegally participate in the lottery, and attempting to use fraudulent means to claim prizes. Rhodes was arrested for 2 counts of fraud 2 months later. It was discovered that Rhodes and Tipton had worked together at a Houston company for years and he was in Des Moines when the ticket was purchased.
In July 2015, Tipton was found guilty on 2 counts of fraud. The following September, he was sentenced to 10 years’ for his actions in the Iowa case.
But that was not all, investigators did more research hand discovered his earlier transgressions.
In June 2017 Eddie confessed to having installed a software program that rigged the RGN in 2005 or 2006. He stated: “I wrote software that included code that allowed me to technically predict winning numbers and I gave those numbers to other individuals who then won the lottery and shared those winnings with me,” He admitted he did this in Colorado, Wisconsin, Kansas, and Oklahoma as well as Iowa. The following August he was sentenced to an additional 25 years in prison and he and his brother will have to pay back $3 million in restitution.
Robert Rhodes pled guilty in Iowa to charges that he helped Eddie and Tommy commit fraud in the 2010 incident. In March 2017 he pled guilty to the 2007 Wisconsin drawing scenario and made a deal to testify against Eddie and Tommy. The deal called for him to be sentenced to 6 months of home confinement and make restitution of $409,000.
5 – Ashwinder Singh
The Maine Lottery scam warning came to life outside of the country in July 2011. The place was across the continent in Winnipeg. Manitoba, Canada. A man in his 60s (who was never publically identified) brought his lottery ticket to a local gas station to see if any numbers on the ticket had won.
The cashier named Ashwinder Singh ran the ticket and told him that the ticket was not a winner.
The ticket was a multi-draw ticket, which means that instead of buying tickets every drawing, he paid for multiple drawings in advance. Later in the week, he went to look for the ticket and couldn’t find it. He thought he had simply lost the ticket, so the man went to a store and bought another ticket with the same numbers.
When the numbers were drawn, the man had discovered that he had won. The drawing had 2 winners splitting the $180,000 jackpot. When the prizes were claimed, lottery officials were suspicious because both tickets came from the same store. The other claimant was Ashwinder Singh.
Officials interviewed Singh who broke down and admitted he had stolen the man’s original ticket. The man was given the total $180,000 and Singh received an 18-month sentence for his actions in September 2013.
Conclusion
These are just a few of the many scams and scandals that besiege lotteries each year. But for each of these scandals, millions of people plop down hard earned cash to have a chance at winning fairly.
And while these exploits may leave the lotteries in question with a temporary black eye, the fact is that they actually discovered the issues and investigated. They brought those who needed to be to justice. Many having to make some sort of restitution.
But they don’t just behave reactively to anomalies that may taint results, the act proactively to prevent events like this from occurring whenever possible. If they didn’t I’m sure thousands more of these stories would be floating around.
And the reality is that they’ve to be proactive. The lottery is a public trust. The citizens must have confidence that it is on the up-and-up. If not, it will result in lower sales which will cost states 10s or even 100s of millions of dollars.
Contents
Bet365 is one of the largest and most respected online betting and gaming services in the world. The company has more than 14 million customers worldwide and makes it services available in more than 200 countries.Despite this, Internet rumors of anti-consumer practices by Bet365 persist. The objective of this report is to answer the following question: is Bet365 legit?
(YES it is!)
World's Biggest Online Sports Betting Company
Bet365 is the largest sports betting company in the world based on total revenues. Bet365 earned £1.3 billion in revenues in 2014.
Privately Held Corporation
Bet365 is one of the largest privately held companies in the UK. Denise Coates is the founder and majority shareholder.
Ranked 3rd Fastest Growing Company in UK
The Sunday Times Profit Track 100 league table ranks Bet365 third among fastest UK private companies in profit growth.
UK Based Company
Bet365 Group Limited is headquartered in Stoke-on-Trent, England, with additional offices in Gibraltar and Australia.
Powerful Leadership
Denise Coates, the founder and CEO of Bet365, was named one of the 100 most powerful UK women on BBC Radio 4.
Sponsorships
Sponsorships include Aston Villa Football Club, the Stoke City Football Club, West Bromwich Albion Football Club, among other professional organisations.
About Bet365
Denise Coates founded Bet365 in 2000. She is the daughter of Peter Coates, who founded Stadia Catering, Signal Radio and the bookmaking firm Provincial Racing, which is where Denise Coates cut her teeth in the gambling world. Denis Coates remains a co-owner along with her father and brother John Coates. Peter is the Chairman, and Denise and John serve as Joint Chief Executives.
Bet365 is based in the United Kingdom and has its headquarters in Stoke-on-Trent, England. Most Bet365 gambling services, including the sportsbook, casino and poker room, are licensed and regulated by the Government of Gibraltar. Bet365 has a major office in Gibraltar as well as one in Australia, which is one of Bet365’s most important markets outside of the United Kingdom.
When Denise Coates launched the business in 2000, she did so by creating a custom sports betting and trading platform and by borrowing £15 million from the Royal Bank of Scotland against the Coates betting shop estate. In 2005, Bet365 sold the betting shop chain to the Gala Coral Group, a betting firm based in Nottingham, and used that money to pay off the RBS loan.
Bet365 Financials
Since shedding the brick-and-mortar aspect of the business and focusing exclusively on online gambling services, Bet365 has evolved into one of the world’s largest online gambling companies. Bet365 reported an operating profit of £116.5 million in 2012, £179m in 2013 and £320.9m in 2014, which is a very impressive 81.5 percent increase of revenue over the previous year.
Bet365 remains a private company. Denise Coates is the primary shareholder at 51 percent of shares, and as a private company, financial statements are not public record. Nevertheless, much is known about Bet365 based on their own reports, taxes paid to the United Kingdom and their public dealings with various other companies and financial institutions.
Current net worth of the company is £449.62m, which is up 24.11 percent over last year. Bet365 has £805.68m in assets, £539.03m in the bank and £347.03m in liabilities. Bet365 has 3,138 employees, which is up more than 20 percent in a year, and total turnover in 2014 was £1.37 billion, which was up 37.99 percent over 2013.
Products and Services
Bet365 may be best known for its sportsbook and racebook services. Through the Bet365 system, punters can bet on horses and greyhounds racing at major and minor tracks around the world, including Australia, Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States. Bet365 also hosts virtual racing, which lets gamblers bet on racing simulations around-the-clock.
The sportsbook covers all major European and North American markets, including American football, baseball, basketball, hockey and soccer at the professional and collegiate levels. Bets can be placed in advance or through a live in-play system.
Bet365 has a website that can be accessed through a standard web browser, and there’s an app that supports Apple and Android devices. The site and app can be used to access the sportsbook and racebook as well as the casino, poker room and bingo hall.
The Bet365 casino is a massive service that offers hundreds of unique games, progressive jackpots and live dealers and croupiers. The bingo hall supports both 75- and 90-ball bingo as well as side games, and the Bet365 poker room is one of the busiest poker networks online.
Dispelling Internet Rumours
To begin, we simply have to ignore the common complaints (among all online brands) that casino games or poker hands are rigged in some way with the random number generator. We hear the exact same accusations for all the top online gaming brands, and we immediately disregard these. The random number generator software is routinely audited for fairness by a 3rd party.
A real controversy had to do with Peter Coates, Director of Bet365 and father of Denise Coates. Peter has donated hundreds of thousands of British Pounds to the British Labour Party. One of those large donations happened to coincide with the gambling laws becoming more relaxed in the UK – which among other things allowed for television commercial advertising of gaming brands (like Bet365).
We do not view this as a slight on the Bet365 brand – this is just simple politics.
Perhaps the most prevalent rumour about Bet365 is that it will treat a customer well until it comes time for them to make a substantial withdrawal, at which point the company will make it very difficult to do so.
Consider, however, that total payouts made by Bet365 in 2014 exceeded £1 billion, and any major payout issue, such as the Conor Murphy ordeal in 2012, become high-profile news.
Bet365 simply makes too much money to nickel and dime its customers, and if they were to try to withhold a major payout, the media would be all over it. The only thing you have to watch for is the maximum liability on a bet, which is usually £1m, and then bet accordingly.
Bet365 Sponsorships
Sponsorships are often an effective way to assess the trustworthiness of a company because individuals and other organizations will avoid partnerships that can reflect badly on them.
Consider that actor Samuel L. Jackson has a substantial contract in place to be the Bet365 spokesperson in Australia.
Bet365 has a sponsorship deal with the Aston Villa Football Club, the Stoke City Football Club and the West Bromwich Albion Football Club of the Premier League in England. The Aston Villa agreement is actually a bit unusual in that it’s a joint partnership between Bet365 and Betfair.
Final Thoughts Concerning the Bet365 Brand
Bet365 is a reputable company that has kept its business in the United Kingdom and Australia despite it likely being a lot cheaper to operate offshore in a location such as Isle of Man where you can escape paying much of your taxes (like PokerStars).
Bet365 has a proven track record of paying out to its customers. It offers consumer-friendly betting options and promotions, and really excels in customer service in our experience.
One recommendation that all Bet365 clients should act on is fully validating their account before any deposits are made and bets are placed. When issues do occur, a lack of validation is usually the culprit.
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Please be aware that there is a company operating as Bet Office 365 that is a scam. They have made the website name very similar to Bet 365 to throw people off.
Probably one of the best. Unfortunatelly I found that there are a lot of countries that the bookmaker doesn't accept, but still Awseome 😉
very awesome....
bet365 is definitely legit, I play there all the time - and I play poker, bet on sports, even play some blackjack and other games. The site is quick, I can deposit and withdraw easily without any delays, and the games seem fair. I understand that bet365 is a HUGE company and it shows because they seem to do everything right. 5 stars for this site.