In April 2023, Texas witnessed the most controversial "heist" in lottery history: a group of mysterious investors swept through lottery outlets across the state within 72 hours, spending $25 million to purchase 25 million tickets, accurately hitting the $95 million jackpot. This mad game, denounced by the lieutenant governor as "the greatest theft against the public," only gradually revealed its meticulously operated tip of the iceberg two years later as the media dug deeper.
Timeline of the Astonishing Scam
When the Texas lottery jackpot remained unclaimed for seven consecutive months, rolling up to the third highest in history at $95 million, the elites of London's financial district smelled blood.
Headed by banker Bernard Marentelli, a multinational team codenamed "Joker" quietly entered the game. They employed a startup company that exploited loopholes in the rules, convincing the lottery commission to urgently install dozens of terminals in places like Houston, which became the key to breaking the daily purchase limit.
In the last three days before the deadline, 13 terminals turned into money printing machines: spitting out 196 tickets per minute, 3.26 tickets per second, creating a terrifying record of 11 million tickets sold per day per store. When these figures were disclosed by The Wall Street Journal, even seasoned lottery professionals exclaimed, "This has surpassed human limits."
The True Face of "Joker"
As the investigation deepened, a mathematical genius hidden behind the scenes emerged—Zeljko Ranogajec, a Slovenian known in the gambling world as "the Loch Ness Monster," who has been controlling a gambling empire with an annual betting volume of over $1 billion since 2010.
His partner, David Walsh, boasted in public, "We are like professional assassins hunting the jackpot."
This golden duo mastered the game of probabilities: their "White Swan Data" team, led by a Cambridge mathematics PhD, used supercomputers to simulate all possible combinations, ultimately calculating a 92% exclusive probability.
When the jackpot reached a critical point, Ranogajec even used private planes to transport cash, ensuring that each terminal could operate around the clock.
Technological Decryption of Lottery Defenses
The vulnerabilities of the Texas lottery system are astonishing:
Rule Loopholes: Allowing batch generation of betting QR codes through an API interface, although external devices are explicitly prohibited, there is no effective monitoring in practice
Physical Breakthrough: Using customized tablets preloaded with consecutive number combinations to bypass the single-ticket purchase limit
Time Difference Attack: Concentrating ticket issuance at the last moment before the deadline, preventing the system from triggering risk control alerts in time
This "dimensional reduction attack" left traditional lottery players dumbfounded—while ordinary players were still studying lucky numbers, professional gamblers had already used algorithms to "precisely detonate" the entire jackpot.
Historical Echoes and System Reflection
Such "mathematical heists" have precedents:
In 1992, an Australian team used 5 million tickets to hunt a $27 million jackpot
In 2019, a Princeton team won $5 million through a probability model
In 2022, Walsh himself replicated this model in Germany, turning a cost of $11 million into a $60 million mega prize
Although the Texas Lottery Commission upgraded the system afterwards, as the Houston Chronicle commented, "When mathematical geniuses ally with capital, even the strictest rules are just algorithms waiting to be cracked." This cat-and-mouse game may have just begun.
