On February 15th 1992, the Virginia State Lottery pulled their usual six numbers out of a total group of 44.  The winning numbers were announced: 8, 11, 13, 15, 19 and 20.  Their records showed that the winning combination had indeed been printed: someone had won 27 million dollars, but things were about to get just a little bit complicated.

It took a few days for the winner to come forward.  On the 27th of February the winning ticket was presented to the lottery’s Security Director by Melbourne man, Joseph Franck, who waltzed in with two Melbourne lawyers by his side.  You see, Franck had cheated the lottery, but here’s the catch: he had done it in a completely legal way.

Let me explain how lotteries generally work.  You take the total number of possible combinations (in this case 7,059,052)  and multiply it by the profit you make on each ticket.  The number you come up with should always be more than the maximum possible amount that can be won.  But the Virginia State Lottery had foolishly neglected to go to such lengths.  In their lottery, each ticket cost $1.  This means that a keen investor could purchase every single one of the possible combinations, and make around 20 million dollars profit on the purchase.  This is exactly what Franck did, with the help of 2500 other investors.  The investors were primarily from Australian and New Zealand, however there were several international bodies involved as well.  Together they raised the seven million necessary to buy every combination.

The trouble doesn’t end there.  Somehow they had to figure out how to work around the logistical nightmare of actually purchasing all those tickets and submitting them in time for the draw.  The group hand-filled out 1.4 million lottery slips – each one catering for five combinations, meaning they wrote down all 7 million combinations by hand.  The slips were then split up among 125 separate groups that had been placed at different locations ready to start purchasing tickets.  At this point the group had to submit and purchase 7 million tickets with just 72 hours remaining on the clock.

When their time ran out the group had only managed to lodge 5 million of the possible combinations and they had to simply hope that the winning combination wasn’t one of the 2 million that they were unable to submit.  The draw went ahead and after several days of searching the elated group discovered that they had indeed won the lottery and – more importantly – they were the only ones who did so.  This meant they received the full $27 million.

Naturally the Virginia State Lottery tried to hold out on awarding the group the winnings, but after a month of legal squirming the group was finally awarded the prize.  With an initial expenditure of just $5 million, the group had just won themselves $22 million in pure profit.

And that’s the story of how some dudes from Melbourne trolled the lottery.