Gaming the Lottery
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Defying the odds
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Lottery players across the country are winning the lottery dozens, hundreds and even thousands of times in the face of almost inconceivably low odds.

This part of the project built on Lawrence Mower’s groundbreaking 2014 investigation into frequent winners for the Palm Beach Post that journalists replicated in about a dozen other states.

We wrote Freedom of Information Act requests to every lottery in the country, eventually compiling more than 11 million records from 36 out of 45 lotteries. We conducted a survey about oversight of repeat winners that all but a couple of lotteries answered. And we read hundreds of financial and performance audits.

Eventually, we found frequent winning occurring in lotteries throughout the country. But oversight on this area was decidedly mixed, with 10 countries telling us they did not monitor frequent winners in a systematic way.

In Pennsylvania the Office of the Auditor General says it is examining information on unusually frequent Pennsylvania lottery winners.

Daniel Simmons-Ritchie is a reporter with PennLive.com in Harrisburg, Pa. Matthew Kauffman and Dave Altimari are reporters for The Hartford Courant in Connecticut. John Caniglia is a reporter for the Cleveland Plain-Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio. Mike Levenson is a reporter and Anica Butler is an editor at the Boston Globe. Jon Allsop, Selin Bozkaya, Cecilie Buhl, Jeremy House and Ayanna Runcie were all students at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism during the 2016-2017 school year. Susan Arbetter is the host of The Capitol Pressroom at public radio station WCNY in Syracuse, New York. John O’Brien is a reporter with the Syracuse Post-Standard and John Lammers is director of content at the Syracuse Media Group. Rich Schapiro is a reporter at the New York Daily News. Cory Schouten is senior editor at the Columbia Journalism Review. Caroline Preston was the interim editor for the fall issue of the World Policy Journal. Laurel Jarombek is World Policy Journal’s managing editor.

Christopher Shay is the former editor of the World Policy Journal. Caroline Preston edited the stories that appeared in the journal.

Jeff Kelly Lowenstein is the project coordinator and an assistant professor of multimedia journalism at Grand Valley State University.

Special thanks go to Statistics Professor Philip Stark of the University of California, Berkeley, who spent 60 hours running calculations for the stories. Here is the link to Stark’s code on GitHub.

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Stories

Lotteries Are Using the Pandemic to Expand Online, Raising Concerns
Jon Allsop, Raymond Joseph and Jeff Kelly Lowenstein
World Politics Review | September 15, 2020
The Lottery Industry
David Hopper
Academic Minute | June 21, 2019
2 years after PennLive investigation, auditors raise questions about prize claims in S.C. Lottery
Daniel Simmons-Ritchie
PennLive | June 11, 2019
The State's Lottery Distribution System Means Some Places Are Winners And Others Losers
Lisa Creamer and Jeff Kelly Lowenstein
WBUR | November 20, 2018
See How Much Money Your Town Or City Gives, And Gets From, The Lottery
Lisa Creamer, Jeff Kelly Lowenstein and Daigo Fujiwara
WBUR | November 20, 2018
The State Lottery Has A New Rule To Stop Repeat Winners — But So Far, They Keep Winning
Lisa Creamer and Jeff Kelly Lowenstein
WBUR | October 24, 2018
Amid Delay In New Lottery Policy, Repeat Winners Keep On Winning
Lisa Creamer and Jeff Kelly Lowenstein
WBUR | April 27, 2018
Some people repeatedly win the Wisconsin Lottery. Do they play fair?
Peter Coutu
Journal Sentinel | March 19, 2018
Just how lucky are regular lottery winners?
Charlotte McDonald
BBC World Service | December 03, 2017
Feel like you belong
Jeff Kelly Lowenstein and Alan Headbloom
YouTube | October 31, 2017
World Policy On Air, Ep. 143: The Global Gamble
World Policy On Air
World Policy Institute | October 26, 2017
The Global Gamble
Jeff Kelly Lowenstein and Raymond Joseph
World Policy Journal | October 08, 2017
Jackpot Tax Avoidance: How One Lottery Company Hides its Billions
Khadija Sharife
World Policy Journal | October 08, 2017
GVSU Professor Jeff Kelly Lowenstein
Shelley Irwin
WGVU | October 06, 2017
GVSU professor on team exposing the gaming of state lottery systems
Monica Scott
MLive | September 27, 2017
Beating the odds or fraud? It’s really hard to find out if someone’s gaming the Michigan Lottery
Stateside Staff
Michigan Radio | September 27, 2017
Auditor General examining unusually frequent lottery wins identified by PennLive
Daniel Simmons-Ritchie
PennLive | September 26, 2017
If the Lottery won't investigate frequent winners, the Auditor General, Attorney General need to do it for them
PennLive Editorial Board
PennLive | September 15, 2017
A nationwide reporting adventure tracks improbably frequent lottery winners
Jon Allsop, Selin Bozkaya, Jeremy Devon House, Jeff Kelly Lowenstein, Ayanna Runcie, and Daniel Simmons-Ritchie
Columbia Journalism Review | September 13, 2017
Defying the Odds
Daniel Simmons-Ritchie and Jeff Kelly Lowenstein
PennLive | September 13, 2017
Ohio Lottery's frequent winners grab top prizes amid improbable odds
John Caniglia
cleveland.com | September 13, 2017
In System With Little Oversight, Connecticut's Biggest Lottery Winners Often Pay Huge Price
Matthew Kauffman, Dave Altimari, and Jon William Allsop
Hartford Courant | August 17, 2017
The gaming of the state lottery has to stop
Editorial
Boston Globe | August 08, 2017
Lawbreakers or just really lucky? Mass. has more repeat lottery winners than any other state
Michael Levenson and Jeff Kelly Lowenstein
Boston Globe | August 03, 2017
New York lottery scammers get jail time for secretly claiming winning tickets for people in debt
Rich Schapiro
NY Daily News | June 09, 2017
In two Central Square bars, this man won more big NY State Lottery prizes than anyone
John O'Brien
syracuse.com | May 30, 2017
How these NYC men won the lottery hundreds of times and collected millions
Selin Bozkaya, Ayanna Runcie, Cecilie Buhl, Jeremy House, Jon Allsop, and Ellen Moynihan
NY Daily News | May 27, 2017
Investigative reporting on frequent lottery winners
Capitol Pressroom
WCNY | May 26, 2017
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We welcome your feedback and ideas about other areas of this critical topic we should cover. Please get in touch with us at gamingthelot@gmail.com.