Posted on 11/28/2022 3:42:50 PM PST by nickcarraway
How a Michigan real-estate broker became convinced he had cracked the lottery—and how he tricked his investors into financing his scheme
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One june morning in 2017, an Albanian American real-estate broker named Viktor Gjonaj parked outside a strip mall in Sterling Heights, a small suburb on the outskirts of Detroit. He hurried past a halal-meat shop, through a waft of spices from an Indian grocery store, and into the claim office of the Michigan Lottery. Gjonaj, who is 6 foot 5, loomed over the front desk in his designer Italian shoes, his dark hair slicked back and glistening in the fluorescent light, and announced that he had won the Daily 4 lottery draw. Twice a day since 1981, the Michigan Lottery has drawn four numbered Ping-Pong balls from a plastic tank and paid up to $5,000 to any player with the same four digits on their pink ticket. But Gjonaj did not have one winning ticket. He had 500.
Skeptical lottery officials ushered him into a back office and checked his tickets carefully. Each was genuine and contained the four winning numbers—7-8-0-0—drawn on June 18. The odds of winning were just one in 416—not terribly long by lottery standards—but it was extremely unusual for someone to play the same numbers 500 times in one day. There were other red flags. Most people who present themselves at lottery claim centers are ecstatic, yet this winner waited for his prizes with the impatience of someone picking up dry cleaning.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Quick! Write a story that distracts from the billion dollar fraud that is FTX, especially since they used the stolen money to steal an election!
Oops. This story was actually written before that.
Cannot both be told?
Vitto did the math, and realized that Gjonaj was spending far more on tickets than he was winning in prizes.
Whenever gambling addicts brag about their winnings, ask them how much they lost. They usually answer with a quizzical look and ask, "What do you mean?" They tend to be the same kind of people who charge everything to credit cards and pay the minimum every month.
Nope. Size matters in everything.
Please PM me the link to the website that let you do that. tyty
One Monday morning I spotted him with a full leg cast on. I learned that he had cleaned up at blackjack over the weekend, but had been robbed and shot in the leg as he left the casino.
Gjonaj? Impossible to pronounce! I’ll just call him Gonad.
I guess it’s rare, but I used to know some guys who gambled on just about everything. Dogs, Jai Lai, ponies, cards. Not so much sports that I knew of. But they all had a system they stuck to AND they kept detailed records of the outcomes. I saw the actual records they kept and also saw them win quite a bit in person. Just an anecdote though.
No one I know was robbed or shot, but one was roughed up and threatened by some goons because he owed the neighborhood bookie.
Maybe some big gamblers can make it work. And a little gambling is fine. Some people hardly bet at all, and if they hit, they really do come out ahead.
The only big gamblers I happened to know were high rollers who got carried away and lost everything, but they never stopped believing they were winning the whole time.
But, if I knew the guys you knew, I might’ve been tempted to try it myself. Probably a good thing I only saw the bad side of gambling.
One helluva good story, Nick. Thanks for posting it.
You are welcome.
Yes, gambling kinda scares me. I stayed away from it because I sensed I could be drawn to it to the point of addiction. Id say that was a good decision.lol
This reminded me of the time some people fixed the PA daily number lottery. The winning number was 666.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Pennsylvania_Lottery_scandal
That’s what I’d worry about, too.
I’m the type of person who can’t buy a box of chocolates because I’ll always eat the whole thing in one sitting (”just one more won’t hurt...”).
So, no gambling (or drinking) for me. lol
Lol. Drinking? No comment...ha
:-) Whenever someone asks why I won’t even drink one drink, I always say, “Because I probably wouldn’t stop at one.” lol
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