Lottery Ripoff? Half Of Most Frequent Prizewinners Are Licensed To Sell Lottery Tickets

The lottery, or “lotto,” has sometimes been called the “poor man’s tax” because lower-income people dreaming of a better life are a large portion of the people who actually buy tickets.

Now an Asbury Park Press investigation has another potential descriptor for it — ripoff.

That’s because the news site found that half of the most frequent prizewinners — those people who turn up on national news outlets like the Inquisitr for winning the lottery multiple times, thus making you decry your rotten luck — are lottery retailers or the family members of said lottery retailers.

Anyone who has played the lottery with frequency knows how difficult it can be to win once, much less two times or more. Therefore, it may surprise you that of the 20 most frequent prizewinners since 2009, 10 of those individuals fell in the lottery retailer-or-family group within the state of New Jersey.

Those 10 winners accounted for 840 prizes totaling around $1.8 million. About 70 percent of those winning lottery tickets were Pick 4s, which carry 1 in 10,000 odds of winning.

The numbers are concerning enough that the New Jersey State Lottery told the newspaper it would be investigating some of the people on the list to see if they are illegally cashing in other players’ winning tickets for a percentage of the winnings, NJ reports.

Reporter Shannon Mullen explains further.

“When this happens, the real winners may be avoiding having to pay child support judgments, taxes or other government debts that are required to be taken out of their winnings. The discounter takes a cut of the prize, usually 20 percent or more…. What’s the harm? For one thing, discounting allows people to potentially cheat the government, and even launder dirty money… But it can also jeopardize the Lottery’s reputation for absolute fairness.”

Mullen adds that “the most prolific winner” is the mother of one area retailer. She has won 134 times with earnings that total $275,000, while another lottery retailer’s family members “have collected 368 prizes dating back to 2004.”

For another possibility at how some people can be so lucky winning the lottery, the Inquisitr’s Jonathan Vankin recently reported on Joan Ginther, the so-called “luckiest person on earth,” who has won more than $2 million on four separate occasions.

While Ginther did not reveal her secret, many experts believe it’s because she buys a large number of lottery tickets, noting that in the past, she’s purchased 80,000, spending around $3.3 million in the process.

What do you think about playing the lottery, readers? Waste of time and money or fun to test your luck? And do you think there is a lottery ripoff cooking in New Jersey (and across the country for that matter)?

[Image via ShutterStock]