Some people don’t buy lottery tickets because they think the games are rigged. They point to a prominent example to prove their point: the Pennsylvania lottery scandal. This type of event scares them away from buying tickets. Should this worry you? Should this scandal stop you from buying tickets?
What was the Pennsylvania lottery scandal? It was a plan by a newscaster named Nick Perry to rig the lottery ball machine for a Pick 3 drawing on April 24, 1980. His plan was to replace all the balls in the machine with heavy balls, except for the two balls – the number 4 and number 6 balls. The heavy balls would have no chance of coming out, so the winning combination would have to include only the numbers 4 and 6. There are only eight different possible combinations of 4 and 6 that could come out and Nick bought thousands of tickets with these combinations. That night’s winning Pick 3 number was 666. Nick Perry won big.
However, the scandal was uncovered and Nick Perry was captured. He served time in prison. This was big news in the lottery world, and since that day, many people have been skeptical about spending money on the lottery.
In my opinion, it was precisely this event that made the lottery a safe game to play. Since this event, lotteries around the world have taken precautions to ensure that a lottery game is never rigged again. They know that if there were ever to be another scandal like this, ticket sales would drop dramatically. People would no longer play the lottery. Therefore, it is in their best interest and everyone’s best interest to make sure that lottery games are fair and that everyone has an equal chance of winning. So you shouldn’t be afraid to spend money on the lottery.