How could you possibly believe you would get away with something like this.
The code was clever, generating predictable numbers on a few particular days of the year. And it must have been subtle, to survive 10 years of nobody else noticing.
Really makes you wonder how many moderately intelligent people out there are successfully running schemes like this and just never arouse suspicion.
If someone you just vaguely know made you an offer to get this payout would you accept it or turn them in? Most of us reading this make enough money that we can afford to be honest in cases like this, so it is a moral question only - are you really dishonest enough to cheat?
The problem was not enough legwork. That person should have played those numbers for a few months or at least weeks before hand.
Now this is a prestige TV series I would watch.
But even then, you need a plausible reason to be cashing in so many winning tickets, so you also spend some of your guaranteed winnings on losing tickets, and also buy a bunch that will break even. That 3rd-place prize is less suspicious if you're also cashing in 1000 $2 winners at the same time, and putting it all into a "Lottery Buyer's Club LLC" account.
It's the Superman III principle. You can steal as many half-pennies as you can haul away in a truck, but if you take even one $10000 note, someone is going to notice.
Super unfortunate wording. I spent a second wondering how you could encode that much precision in two 'bits'.
This seems like a good case for open source; and pay bounties for anything untoward. I really am curious what the code looks like for this.
https://media.defcon.org/DEF%20CON%2025/DEF%20CON%2025%20pre...
Much the same way the mental processes enjoy playing the lottery.
See Possibility Effect, Certainty Effect