Three European men bought up tons of lottery tickets to win big in the Texas Lottery, and it was apparently not against the rules.
The story centers around a trio of gambling entrepreneurs in Malta and London who shelled out almost $26 million to get approximately 99 percent of the possible number combinations in order to land their win, NewsNation reported Friday.
They later got a winning ticket in the $95 million drawing in April of last year.
“After taking the lump sum payout of $57.8 million, the planners came away with a profit of about $20 million,” the outlet said.
According to Houston Chronicle investigative reporter Eric Dexheimer, the move was legal and there is no law against it.
However, the Texas Lottery has made some changes to keep others from doing the same thing.
“One thing the Texas Lottery won’t do anymore, said Dexheimer, is to provide low-traffic lottery outlets with extra terminals. This allowed the planners to buy and print nearly 26 million tickets in the 72 hours between drawings,” the outlet noted.
In March, a woman in Texas who did not match a single number still won a $250,000 lottery jackpot, KXAN reported at the time.
“Texas Lottery’s ‘All or Nothing’ game gives customers a chance to win by matching all 12 numbers drawn, or none at all. The odds of winning either way are 1 in 2,704,156, according to Texas Lottery,” the article said, highlighting the fact that the winner did not commit fraud.
In September, a man in Macomb County, Michigan, got the surprise of a lifetime when he got an alert from the state’s lottery and thought he had won $5 or $100, Breitbart News reported. However, he actually won the $4.57 million Lotto 47 jackpot.
Another incredible lottery story happened in 2023 when a gas station in Encino, California, sold two winning lottery tickets in one day that were worth a total of $400 million, per Breitbart News.