The luckiest people in America might not be lucky at all

Three hundred and fifty-eight. That's how many times one Florida man cashed a scratch-off ticket worth at least $600 since 2015. Nearly 300 of those winning tickets were sold at a small market owned by his uncles.

Coincidence? Maybe. But similar stories have played out across the country, and investigators, mathematicians, and lottery watchdogs are asking the same question: are some of America's luckiest winners actually gaming the system?

How the schemes work

There's more than one way to beat the lottery. Experts have identified several recurring methods.

The most common is ticket theft. A customer hands a clerk a scratch-off to scan. The machine chimes. If the player doesn't hear it, the clerk pockets the ticket and hands back a loser. The stolen winner gets passed to a relative or associate to cash in.

Reid Galbreath, a former California State Lottery investigations officer turned whistleblower, said he witnessed this scheme firsthand during a sting operation. A store owner stole a fake winning ticket and handed it to his mother to redeem. She had already claimed multiple big-winning tickets.

Lottery officials often ignore the problem, Galbreath said. Admitting fraud threatens a game built on public trust.

A second scheme is "ten-percenting": buying winning tickets at a discount from gamblers who want quick cash or want to avoid taxes, then claiming the tickets as your own.

A third involves outright forgery: printing or altering tickets to match unclaimed jackpots.

Each method has been prosecuted. Each keeps surfacing.

Massachusetts: A $20 million family business

One of the most documented ten-percenting cases in recent memory unfolded in Massachusetts.

Ali Jaafar and his son, Yousef, both of Watertown, spent nearly a decade buying winning lottery tickets at a discount from gamblers across the state, often working through convenience store owners. They claimed the winnings as their own income, then filed fake gambling losses to erase the tax liability and collect refunds.

Between 2011 and 2020, the Jaafar family cashed more than 14,000 tickets and claimed more than $20 million in Massachusetts Lottery winnings. In 2019, Ali Jaafar was the state's top individual ticket casher. Two of his sons ranked third and fourth.

The family collected more than $1.2 million in fraudulent tax refunds.

A federal jury convicted both men. Ali Jaafar was sentenced to five years in prison. Yousef received more than four. Together, they were ordered to pay $6 million in restitution.

New York: Hiding what you owe

In New York, lottery discounting serves a different purpose. Under state law, winners who owe child support, back taxes, or public assistance repayments have those obligations automatically withheld from any prize over $600.

The workaround: sell the winning ticket at a discount to someone who claims it as their own, and keeps the difference.

In 2017, state authorities arrested Eduardo Moran-Barrera of the Bronx, who claimed 686 tickets worth $1.48 million between 2012 and 2016, purchased from 209 different retailers. Neil Ferguson of Manhattan claimed 91 tickets worth $273,000 over a similar stretch. Neither paid state taxes on those winnings.

Seven lottery retailers had their licenses suspended for facilitating the schemes.

Florida: Family ties and improbable odds

Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications, found more than a dozen players who repeatedly beat staggering odds and had personal ties to the stores that sold their winning tickets.

Mathematician Skip Garibaldi reviewed data on Florida's most prolific winners. His conclusion was blunt.

He suspects that there is something underhanded happening. The only question is, what exactly is that thing?

For Florida's single biggest winner to have won legitimately, Garibaldi calculated he would need to spend nearly $4,000 a day on scratch-off tickets, a $15 million total since 2015.

A 2014 Palm Beach Post investigation using similar analysis led the Florida Lottery to terminate the licenses of 18 retailers for fraud.

South Carolina: The simplest theft

Sometimes the method is blunt. In November 2025, a 7-Eleven clerk in Charleston County allegedly swapped a customer's winning ticket for a losing one, hiding the winner behind the register. The clerk later redeemed the $250 ticket himself.

Surveillance footage and witness statements corroborated the theft. The clerk was arrested and charged with intent to defraud.

Pennsylvania: When the game itself was rigged

The boldest lottery fraud in American history didn't involve stolen tickets or tax schemes. It involved the lottery's own employees rigging the draw.

In April 1980, WTAE news anchor Nick Perry and a small circle of conspirators injected paint into lottery balls to weigh them down, all except the 4 and 6, so only those numbers would rise during the Daily Number drawing. The result was the number 666, and Perry had already placed large bets on every combination using those digits.

The scheme unraveled quickly. Bookmakers who had unknowingly taken those bets grew suspicious and tipped off a reporter. The Maregos brothers, who had bought nearly 15,000 tickets as part of the plan, had told too many people which numbers to play.

A grand jury indicted Perry and his co-conspirators that September. Perry was convicted and sentenced to three to seven years in prison. He never admitted any role in the scandal before his death in 2003.

Eight years later, a computer repairman who maintained Pennsylvania Lottery mainframes searched the system for large unclaimed jackpots, printed a matching ticket, and had an associate claim a $15.2 million prize. Lottery officials approved the ticket, then noticed the serial number traced the ticket paper to the wrong location. The check was frozen within 90 minutes. Both men were convicted.

The cost to everyday players

Across every scheme, the same people lose: ordinary ticket buyers who played fair and never knew the game was tilted.

Galbreath put it plainly:

It's easier to ignore fraud than to publicly admit you have a problem. But everybody should have equal chances to win.

The question isn't whether lottery fraud happens. The record shows it does, in courthouses from Boston to Albany to Pittsburgh. The real question is how much goes undetected.