It’s easy to look at the lottery as a simple game involving a few numbers. But make no mistake: the lottery is a highly lucrative business. In 2019 alone, the total revenue generated by national lotteries reached just under $82 billion. That’s more than North America's total revenue for the major professional sports leagues.
Most funds generated by lottery ticket sales are split up and applied to the jackpot and smaller prizes. With lottery sales routinely reaching into the billions, you can see why so many lottery winners have claimed nine-figure jackpots. The potential to turn a $2 ticket into a $750 million prize has been enough to keep the lottery industry steadily growing over the last few decades.
With so much money at stake, it’s a foregone conclusion that there will be lots of people trying to cheat. People often try to cheat when playing games at casinos, and the stakes are significantly lower.
It’s only natural that some people would try to cheat the lottery since winning can provide life-altering wealth that can last for generations. Morality is often conquered by greed when the stakes are that high.
What Are the Odds of Legitimately Winning the Lottery?
By its very nature, winning the lottery is a highly exclusive event. It’s so complete that you’re more likely to
- Get crushed by a meteorite
- Die in a plane crash
- Get elected President of the United States
- Write a New York Times best-seller
- Win a gold medal in the Olympics
The extreme exclusivity is kind of the entire point of the lottery. After all, how much of a grand prize would there be if it was easy to win?
The odds of successfully winning the lottery will vary depending on the lottery that you’re playing. For example, the odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot are about one in 302,575,350, while the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are about one in 292,201,338. With odds and prizes reaching hundreds of millions, you can probably see why people try to cheat in the lottery.
Are There Ways To Cheat the Lottery
- Gluing winning combinations
- Retailer based scams
- Manipulate the ball selection process
- Reprogram the random number generating software
- Buy every possible number combination
Lottery operators and regulators run notoriously secured drawings to prevent cheating as much as possible. If people were ever to believe that a lottery was rigged, then they would stop buying tickets, and the entire industry would crumble.
Despite the essentially ironclad lottery commissions, there are still several different ways that people have tried to cheat the lottery over the years:
Gluing Winning Combinations
On The Ticket. This type of scam is more commonly attempted on scratch-off tickets, but it’s been tried a few times with Powerball and Mega Millions as well.
The idea is simple enough: glue the winning numbers or symbols onto the ticket and be proclaimed the winner. These scams don’t get very far since most tickets have barcodes that must be scanned to verify the win.
The scanner will quickly reveal that the ticket isn’t a winner, and the scam will immediately fall apart.
Retailer Based Scams
These scams are more about cheating players instead of cheating the lottery itself. To redeem your ticket, you’ll need to go to a place that offers the lottery. You hand over the ticket, the retailer scans it and then hands over the winnings.
There’s a limit to the maximum prize you can redeem in each state, usually less than $600. For the scam to work, the retailer would say that you were mistaken and the ticket was a loser.
They would then keep the ticket and either redeem for themself or give it to someone else to redeem.
Manipulate the Ball Selection Process
A scam like this would take a long time to plan and require many things happening just right. The goal would be to tamper with the physical balls that are used to determine the winning combination.
Lots of lottery games still rely on a blowing system to randomly select numbered balls entered into the machine. Making some balls slightly lighter or smaller would increase the odds of selecting them.
Reprogram the Random Number Generating Software
Another challenging cheating strategy would be to try to reprogram the computer software used to pick numbers.
Some modernized lotteries rely on computer software to generate the winning combination randomly.
By hacking into the software used to select these numbers, it’s possible to manipulate them and force the program to pick the ones matching a purchased ticket.
Buy Every Possible Number Combination
Technically, you could argue that this isn’t cheating, but the method has been outlawed as a result of previous winners.
The plan is based on calculating every possible number combination in a lottery. For example, a lottery recruiting six numbers ranging from one to 40 would have 3,838,380 possible combinations.
The jackpot would need at least three times the number of possible combinations to make a profit. The next stage is to raise enough cash to buy one ticket for every combination.
Regardless of the numbers selected, you would have at least one winning ticket ready to be turned in.
These scams are just a few of the ways that people have tried to cheat the lottery. While the perpetrators might have been initially successful, it didn’t take long for the authorities to notice and correct the situation.
The lottery commissions quickly learn from these attempts and take actions to prevent them from being tried again in the future.
Are There Legal Ways To Increase Your Odds of Winning the Lottery?
- Buy more tickets
- Get some partners
- Don’t pick sequential numbers
- Pick a wide range of numbers
- Avoid following a pattern
- Decide between the common numbers or the overdue ones
- Stick to the same numbers
- Look for games with fewer players
The old saying that “cheaters never win” can apply to the lottery. Even if you were successfully able to cheat and win, the truth would eventually come out, and you’ll be stuck with a long prison sentence.
Modern technology makes it virtually impossible to cheat and get away with it. However, there are a few things that you can legally do that might improve your chances of winning:
Buy More Tickets
The most obvious answer is to buy more lotto tickets naturally — the more ticket combinations that you have, the more likely that one of them will hit. The downside to this strategy is that you’ll need to buy many tickets to make a difference.
There isn’t much of a difference between buying one ticket and five. You’ll need to purchase hundreds of tickets before your odds increase in any meaningful way.
Get Some Partners
One of the most successful strategies for winning the lottery is to form a partnership with other people. It’s pretty common for families, friends, or employees to create lottery pools. If ten people kick in $100 each, you’ll be able to buy way more tickets together.
The only problem is that while the odds of winning might increase, the total winnings will decrease as you would have to split the prize equally across a lot of people. Winning the lottery would still make you very rich, just not as rich as you would have been if you played solo.
Don’t Pick Sequential Numbers
Playing consecutive numbers (i.e., 16 and 17) is a good way to waste your ticket. The odds of any number appearing are the same. However, the odds of sequential numbers appearing on the same ticket are way less likely. Even now and again, there will be a few drawings that contain two consecutive numbers, but it’s way less common.
The chances that a lottery drawing has three consecutive numbers or more is impossible and is virtually a guarantee of losing.
Pick A Wide Range Of Numbers
Most lottery players have a select group of “lucky numbers” that they always play. While this idea isn’t necessarily wrong, it does have some flaws. Many of these lucky numbers come from dates on the calendar, such as births or anniversaries.
The problem is these numbers are limited to months in the year (12) and days in a month (31). It’s improbable that all winning lottery numbers stay underneath 31, so make sure your numbers are sufficiently spaced out.
Avoid Following A Pattern
The thing about randomly selected lottery numbers is that they’re, well, random. Our brains love to identify natural patterns, which are soothing.
However, that’s not a winning strategy for the lottery. You should avoid picking sequential as listed above, but any numbers that form a different pattern, such as numbers that end in five, are divisible by three or are a part of the Fibonacci Series.
Decide Between The Common Numbers Or The Overdue Ones
The odds of any number being randomly selected are equal. However, some numbers appear more frequently than others. Plenty of people opt for tickets that include these numbers in hopes that history repeats itself.
On the other hand, there are a lot of numbers that are “overdue” and very rarely get drawn. These numbers will eventually be selected and aren’t picked as often as the more common ones. Then again, you could simply opt for a combination of common and overdue numbers to cover both bases.
Stick To The Same Numbers
You should keep playing the same number once you’ve found a set that meets the other requirements on this list. It’s tempting to switch to a new set after you’ve lost a few times, but it won’t help increase your odds.
The chances of accurately predicting numbers are impossible, so it’s best to play the same set of numbers each time. In theory, your numbers would eventually be selected. It’s just that it might take a few hundred million drawings to get them.
Look For Games With Fewer Players
There are tons of different lottery options available. Playing the games that draw the most attention will only hurt your chances of winning.
The greater the competition is, the less likely that you’ll be the one that comes away with the top prize. The only downside is that the smaller games often come with smaller prizes.
You might have to settle for winnings that can change your life but not be enough for you to retire immediately.
Play the Lottery For Free Instead of Trying To Cheat
Cheating will get you nowhere in life that you want to be. The odds of successfully cheating the lottery and getting away with it are lower than simply winning the lottery legitimately. There’s no reason to risk a lengthy stretch in prison by cheating, especially when you can play the lottery for free.
By opening a Yotta account, you’ll be able to gain entry into the weekly sweepstakes contest for free. You’ll be given one ticket for every $25 that’s in your account. So an account balance of $250 will net you ten tickets. The money will stay in your account, and the tickets will be provided for free.
Each ticket includes six numbers and every night at 9PM ET all numbers are drawn. Depending on how many of your numbers match, you could win a few cents to $1 million.
Visit Yotta today to open your account and make your first deposit so you can enter into the next drawing. There’s no reason to try to cheat when you can play the lottery for free and have an extra incentive to save money in your account.
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