Stop Predatory Gambling
Join Donate
Government official personally thanked those who were scamming the Lottery for propping up flat sales
by Les
As if there was not a mountain of evidence already showing how government’s predatory gambling program is a major failure, along comes another damning news report. Andrea Estes of The Boston Globe has a must-read account about how the Massachusetts Lottery knew high-rollers were scamming the state’s Cash Windfall game during “rolldown weeks’’ when prizes swell to 5 to 10 times the normal amount and then actually thanked them for propping up sales.
From the article:
“Lottery officials this summer said they were surprised to learn that a handful of high-stakes gamblers had taken over one of their $2 games, with just three groups of bettors accounting for most of the winning tickets statewide at certain times. The lottery disciplined two sales agents who allowed the high-rollers to run the ticket machines themselves and announced new rules to limit the dominance of sophisticated bettors. But the Globe has found that lottery managers for years allowed and some say even encouraged the groups to manipulate the game, Cash WinFall. They provided extra ticket machines and printers to accommodate the biggest player, a retired store owner from Michigan, so he could buy more tickets faster. Gerry Selbee, whose gambling group spent millions of dollars on the game, said the regional director in Western Massachusetts personally thanked him for propping up flat sales.
“In addition, it appears that an extraordinary lapse by lottery officials last year allowed a group led by an MIT computer whiz to single-handedly hijack the game, winning more than $2 million – nearly the entire jackpot from a single drawing.
““It was either incompetence or collusion with someone [at lottery headquarters] in Braintree,’’ charged Selbee, who says the lottery has for years enabled, openly or tacitly, the gambling groups.
In Massachusetts. lottery money is used to fund state aid to cities and towns to help them fund local public services. After reading Estes’s article, how can any reasonable person conclude that government ‘s gambling program is an effective way to collect this funding?
Subject
The federal government should shut down these phony state lottery operations just like they did with the Louisiana lottery in the late 19th century. They are a scam!!!
this is simply to mcuh
Almost speechless! Good grief. We’re sinking lower and lower into the gutters This official should be dismissed. A public official with this attitude is one who could be bribed.