now to what are known as lottery
syndicates there have been a lot of
theories over the years on how to beat
the lottery from lucky numbers to
playing the same sequence over and over
but now as you just heard the lottery
syndicate think of it as well think of
it as an office pool but much bigger and
some people have actually used these to
beat certain lotteries and win news for
Jax reporter Scott Johnson shows us the
inner workings of this covert group and
how some have beaten the odds with them
well Mary when you go to the gas station
and buy your lottery tickets maybe you
fill out a dozen forms or so get a dozen
tickets maybe a hundred for your office
pool but consider doing it on a much
larger scale buying thousands and
thousands of tickets trying to get as
many number of combinations as you can
you can play your lucky numbers maybe
your birthday we even a few years back
showed you one of the luckiest lottery
spots in the state a shell on Edgewood
by the way but the world of lottery
syndicates is something all different so
let's simplify it say the odds of
winning a lottery game is one in five
million and you have a group of
investors buy up all five million number
combinations that's what's called a
lottery syndicate then if the jackpots
say went above five million to around
six million dollars you could feasibly
make some money now that is
oversimplifying it taxes are taken out
there could be multiple winners and most
jackpots don't eclipse all the number
combinations but up north in the state
of Massachusetts a few groups use this
method to beat the odds that includes
jerry selbee a man who beat a lottery
game in the state called windfall the
Boston Globe uncovered this story and he
was profiled here on Inside Edition
Selby found a totally legal method and
spent around three hundred thousand
dollars on tickets to guarantee a win
but the public eventually caught on and
the game was discontinued they got
together with the groups of people and
got the money together and made the and
and and and made the investment
essentially in filling out the tickets
Mitch stone is a local attorney who
deals in gambling law it says on the
surface there's nothing illegal with
buying up as many tickets as you can
even if you're dealing in tens of
thousands of tickets there's nothing in
legal about it is that's more along the
lines of what everybody does when
Powerball goes to six hundred and
seventy five million dollars and
everybody says if we have an office pool
and all put our money together and we
can buy more tickets than give ourselves
more of a chance there are websites set
up for lottery syndicates I found but
Stone says the legality could be murky
because in Florida
for instance you need to be in Florida
to purchase the ticket not buy bulk over
the internet or through the mail and
this is done globally with certain
lotteries all over the world but the big
issue about this idea is not as much
financial in raising the money or legal
which you do need to check out its
logistical and filling out all your
individual lottery tickets say you have
three people doing it or nine people
doing it or a hundred people doing it
filling out 100,000 tickets or more
isn't easy
then there's finding the right game with
a high enough payout versus the amount
of number combinations they're looking
for the expected value what can they
make on it in the long run how much can
they make over the time period
Sharon sweet is a math professor at FSCJ
she says to even consider something like
this you need to calculate the odds
versus the payout you could win and the
amount of hours it would take for all
that legwork is that something you would
probably need to calculate oh yeah
definitely I mean they spent lots of
hours just looking at their winners ten
days non-stop for ten hours a day that
they were looking through every single
card that they had bought sweet ads the
games where you get payouts for matching
only three or four numbers might give
lottery syndicates better odds when you
go down to just picking three out of
that six numbers and when that was goes
down to like one out of sixteen thousand
the odds of recreating what happened in
Massachusetts is slim but that doesn't
mean people who dream of making millions
may not try it
and slim is right I'm looking at the
odds here on the back of a lottery
ticket here and it looks like the odds
at least for all the Florida games I see
pretty much outweigh the prize payout so
it's difficult to do but there are
websites out there if you look for
lottery syndicates who are trying this
we're live tonight Scott Johnson channel
4 the local station