Pennsylvania Lottery Fails to Analyze Suspicious Frequent Winners, Says Auditor General

The Pennsylvania Lottery does not do plenty to dissect information on its customers’ winning patterns, the say auditor general, Timothy DeFoor, said Monday.

DeFoor is interested that this deficiency of inadvertence could live letting frequent winners capture off with committing widescale fraud.

We found the drawing has protection measures intentional to forestall illegal or fraudulent activities from retailers merchandising lottery products, but non from anyone else who plays the lottery,” DeFoor said inwards a statement. “This has nix to manage with lottery products. They are completely secure. We are talking nigh whether or non the someone claiming the winning prize is doing something they shouldn’t.

Frequent winners, who come out to resist the odds, should follow a blood-red signal flag to lottery operators because they could live mired inward “discounting” or “ten-percenting” schemes.

The Ten-Percenters

In PA and many other states, money put up be deducted from lottery jackpots o'er a certain limen (usually $600) if the winner is found to owe nation or federal taxes or nestling support.

This has created a clandestine marketplace inward ticket-cashing businesses which will purchase winning drawing tickets, typically for x percent less than their face value.

Last August inward Massachusetts, a father, and his II sons were supercharged with legion(p) counts of fraud, money laundering, and assess dodging inwards what prosecutors have described as the biggest discounting operation uncovered in the US so far.

Over octad years, Ali Jaafar and his sons, Mohamed and Yousef, all of Waterford, Mass., cashed inwards 13,000 winning Massachusetts Bay Colony Lottery tickets, mostly scratch-offs, for almost $21 million.

In Pennsylvania, the Auditor General’s Office examined 17 winners with over 50 wins o'er $600 from July 2017 through March 2020. In total, these players claimed almost $2.7 million, according to DeFoor.

He noted that single of the winners was a lottery retailer who had filed 42 winning claims during that period. The retailer’s spouse filed 88.

Lottery Denial

Currently, lottery employees and their immediate kinfolk are prohibited from playing drawing games. DeFoor recommended this should hold to retailers, too. He also said that drawing officials should be given greater powers to enquire winners.

The Pennsylvania Lottery said inward a statement Mon that it in agreement(p) with many of DeFoor’s findings. But it “strongly disagree[s] with the execution audit’s asseveration that frequent wins by Lottery players are an indicant of illegal activity on the parting of the players.”

“From our perspective, this unfounded assertion relies upon the same flawed methodology that others have got relied on to erroneously put forward questions most the perceived statistical improbableness of sure lottery players’ wins,” it added.

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