Cracking scratch lottery tickets

Mohan Srivastava, a statistician from Toronto, cracked the numerical system behind a series of scratch lottery tickets.

“Once I worked out how much money I could make if this was my full-time job, I got a lot less excited,” Srivastava says. “I’d have to travel from store to store and spend 45 seconds cracking each card. I estimated that I could expect to make about $600 a day. That’s not bad. But to be honest, I make more as a consultant, and I find consulting to be a lot more interesting than scratch lottery tickets.”

Eventually the gaming commission listened to him and removed the tickets from stores.