Inside the scheme to buy 25m tickets and win the Texas lottery and how its affected another winners $83m payout
What’s the only way to guarantee winning the lottery?Everyone knows – you buy every number combination imaginable, which is exactly what one audacious international group of gamblers did, throwing the Texas state lottery into disarray in the process. The group calculated if they bought 25.8 million $1 tickets of almost every potential six-number combination between 1 and 54, they would make a profit when the jackpot was higher.
The theory was put to the test in April 2023 when the Lotto Texas jackpot rolled over to $95 million.The scheme sounds so much like a heist movie it could be a parody, down to the man allegedly behind it being known as ‘The Joker’.Addressing his assembled crack team of accomplices, he would say, of course: “And the best part? … It’s all perfectly legal.”Technically, it was.
Nothing in the Texas state lottery code says a person can’t buy every number combination, although since the win – which resulted in a lump-sum profit of $57.8 million before taxes – much is now under review.Perhaps most surprisingly, details of the mass buying scheme didn’t surface until after February this year when a woman who claims she won an $83.5 million Lotto Texas jackpot fair-and-square was told she couldn’t collect as she bought the ticket through an app.Days after the Feb.17 draw for the $83.5 million prize, the Texas Lottery Commission (TLC) put the payout on hold and announced lottery courier services such as Jackpocket – which the woman had used – would no longer be allowed in Texas, effective immediately.Here’s how the first controversial win may end up canceling the other.The $95 million jackpot scheme was hatched by one-time London-based banker Bernard Marantelli, according to the Wall Street Journal.The idea was bankrolled by Zeljko Ranogajec, a shadowy figure who operates out of Tasmania, Australia, and – among many aliases – is known to some as ‘The Joker’, per the newspaper.They recruited an online ticket...