5 Card Cash has been offline since Nov. 2015
HARTFORD, Conn. — Connecticut Lottery retailers in Canton and Hartford face larceny and computer crime charges after authorities say they illegally manipulated the 5 Card Cash lottery game to produce more winning tickets.
Vikas Patel, 32, of Windsor Avenue, Windsor, and Pravnav Patel, 32, of Revere Drive, Bloomfield, each face three felony counts of first-degree larceny, first-degree computer crimes and rigging a game. Both posted $25,000 bail and are scheduled to be arraigned Monday at Superior Court in Hartford.
Several more lottery dealers are expected to face charges.
The 5 Card Cash game was suspended November after Connecticut Lottery and state Department of Consumer Protection officials noticed there were more winning tickets than then game's parameters should have allowed.
An investigation determined that some lottery retailers were manipulating lottery machines to print more instant winner tickets and fewer losers.
At Hartford Liquor at 212 Capen St. in Hartford, authorities determined that in one sample 67 percent of the 5 Card Cash tickets were instant winners. In a second sample, 58 percent were winners. In a control group of retailers, 24 percent of tickets sold were instant winners. Hartford Liquor owner Vikas Patel denied manipulating the machine. Most of the winning tickets were cashed at his store, but more than 400 were cashed at a lottery retailer near his home.
At Center Spirit Shoppe at 32 Bridge St. in the Collinsville section of Canton, investigators determined that 76 percent of the 5 Card Cash tickets sold in one sample were instant winners. In the second, 59 percent were winners. Store owner Pravnav Patel denied manipulating the lottery machine, according to the warrant for his arrest, but was identified as the person cashing the bulk of the winning tickets at other lottery retailers.
According to the arrest warrants, an investigator for the Connecticut Lottery determined that terminal operators could slow down their lottery machines by requesting a number of database reports or by entering several requests for lottery game tickets. While those reports were being processed, the operator could enter sales for 5 Card Cash tickets. Before the tickets would print, however, the operator could see on a screen if the tickets were instant winners. If tickets were not winners, the operator could cancel the sale before the tickets printed.
The 5 Card Cash game remains suspended.
Looks like Vikas & Pravnav Smith are in hot water.
Wow thats crazy I buy from that store
Patel,
need I say more.
LOL....They even tell you the game is rig to not produce a winning ticket!!! To fool people just place it in their face they won't notice it. All computer drawings are rig period. It picks from the lowest picked numbers. This ensures high returns and more games for suckers too play.
Bingo!
I think you meant to say rigged. Patel's again...
While the sales process was flawed, the bigger issue is the ability of lottery machine operators to buy tickets from their own retail location. That should not be permitted. While that wouldn't necessarily prevented this situation, it would have raised the bar somewhat.
Retailers have detailed information that the public at-large doesn't have. For example, in PA, a retailer can know whether 90% of lower tier winners have been redeemed out of an instant ticket pack. From my limited understanding, will show up as auto-settled on the retailer's report. While such knowledge is of limited value, it could, in theory, be gamed on high denomination packs ($20 and up) to determine whether few tickets have a better than normal probability of a winner...
20 tickets in a PA $30 pack. 90% of 20 is 18. Statistically expected number of winners is ~7. If 90% of lower tier prizes still not redeemed by 18th ticket, then there's a roughly 50/50 chance of the next ticket being a winner. That's better than the typical 1 in ~3 odds. Or if the retailer doesn't want to risk anything, wait until the 19th ticket. If still not 90%, the last ticket is a near sure thing. For lower denominations, this isn't even worth the retailer's time, but for the possibility of winning $10+ ($40 is the minimum non-break-even prize for PA $30 tickets) it's worth gaming.
With all that said, I could be mistaken, and perhaps the 90% auto-settle threshold doesn't work the way I believe it does. Sure, someone here with more knowledge can chime in whether this is exploitable. Regardless, point is lottery retailers have information that the general public doesn't, and hence have an unfair advantage.
On a different, but related thought to this story, there are many instances of lottery games, despite all the testing, going live with obvious flaws. Among the most notable was the original Texas All or Nothing game that had no prize cap. I noticed that flaw immediately, but it wasn't until a close call many months after the game had gone live, Texas lottery officials took note of the serious issue. Texas pulled the game and reworked it with new play tickets that lacked pre-selected choices (ie. no more 1st 12, last 12, all even, all odd), strongly tout using quick-pick, and added a relatively low prize cap. Texas Lottery dodged a bullet, because they could have potentially lost upwards of a 1/4 Billion (not a typo, yes really that much!) if a popular combination had hit.
Don't you mean you used to buy from that store ?
"Looks like Vikas & Pravnav Smith are in hot water."
I'm sure the lottery can revoke their ability to sell lottery tickets, but what crime did they commit?
They took advantage of a flaw in the system to cancel tickets that were losers. Did the state legislature actually write a law making that illegal? I'm going to take a leap of faith and assume that the lottery didn't even think it was possible to find out whether a ticket was a winner or loser before it was issued.
They didn't cancel the tickets that they knew were winners. I'm not sure how you'd make that illegal even if you wanted to.
There may be a law prohibiting "manipulating a lottery machine", but I'm not seeing the manipulation. They took advantage of the system to slow transactions, but they didn't do anything to make the machine do something it didn't do by design. They very definitely didn't manipulate anything to influence the tickets that were generated by the central computer - they just decided which of those tickets to accept. As I see it authorities are claiming it's a crime because of the result, rather than because of the action, though I am open to arguments on this point.
Did they violate their contract as retailers? I'd figure there's a pretty good chance they did, bur breach of contract is a civil matter. Did they do something unethical? I think that's a matter of opinion. They took advantage of the system to gain an advantage. How is that different than a handful of people doing that in the MA game that rolled jackpot money into smaller prizes? How it it different than using a system to predict numbers you think will be drawn?
Either way, the take away is that it's really stupid to design a system where the terminal announces that a ticket is a winner without requiring that the ticket be scanned. I don't think you need to be an expert on lottery security to figure that one out.
Why can't people - ALL PEOPLE - move away from doing this kind of nonsense?
It's bad, and I hate it. It's dishonest, and I'm totally against it.
Why do these morons even try?
TO ALL THOSE MORONS:
Stop ripping off this and that, you won't get away with it. The lotto system in place has an incredibly large lobby, and therefore significant security. Eventually, you will be caught and SORRY. You will be made to pay!
You'll find yourself sitting in your jail cell and all the time your there, you'll be thinking:
"Man, wha I do dat? My momma raise me betta. I even knowd betta. But I hook up wif dis ovva dude, and he say it was aw'ight, and so I go wif him." "now, what's I gwinta teo da Judge?"
Mr Floyd- The movie "Hunt for Red October" was on the other night in this neck of the woods and there is a scene where the Admiral tells Ryan " The Russians don't take a dump unless they have a plan" in other words, Connery has to convince the crew that they have to get off the sub voluntarily. .and he does. Point being - the authorities are not going after these Patels unless they know they did something that is not permitted by the lottery rules. Just because you don't see it- does not mean it does not exist.
As they say: Stay tuned.
"I'm sure the lottery can revoke their ability to sell lottery tickets, but what crime did they commit?"
They were charged with "three felony counts of first-degree larceny, first-degree computer crimes and rigging a game." and possibly changed with inciting some LP members to make bigoted comments.