Lucky Lottery Winners Share Secrets
This story began with an e-mail from a viewer who regularly visits the Pennsylvania Lottery Web site. He kept seeing the same people winning big scratch-off prizes over and over again, and he asked Team 4 what was going on, so we decided to check it out.
Verona businessman Jerry Laskoski plays lottery scratch-off games every day.
"How many years have you been doing this?" Parsons asked.
"Probably about the last five or six," Laskoski said.
"How many times have you won $1,000 or more?" Parsons asked.
"Never $1,000 -- $100, $500," Laskoski said.
That puts Laskoski in a class with most daily instant lottery players.
Then, there are those in a class by themselves.
Moon Township real estate manager Joe Tarquinio has hit 13 times for $1,000 or more on scratch-off games in the past three years. He hit twice for $10,000 -- and recently for a quarter-million.
Tarquinio declined Team 4's request for an interview. So did Indiana jewelry store owner Gary Wyant, who has scratched for $1,000 or more 14 times.
Others have been even luckier with the scratch-offs.
Steve Seibert, of McKees Rocks, hit for $1,000 or more 23 times.
Debra Bitler, of Shillington, in eastern Pennsylvania, holds the record with 38 instant lottery wins topping $1,000.
"It looks to me like those 38 wins are pretty remarkable," Carnegie Mellon professor Paul Fischbeck said.
Fischbeck figures out odds for a living. Team 4 asked him and statistics professor Chad Schafer to calculate the odds of what Donna Goeppert did.
Goeppert, of Bethlehem, Pa., played a scratch-off game last year that only had five top prizes of $1 million. Goeppert won two of those $1 million tickets. That's right, two out of the five.
"There were about 7.2 million tickets, and five $1 million winners. If she played 100 times, the odds of her winning two $1 million tickets was about one in 420 million," Fischbeck said.
If you're thinking Goeppert's luck was enhanced because the lottery has a bias favoring the eastern part of the state, think again, lottery director Ed Trees said.
"It's a random seeding of winning tickets through the universe of a game," Trees said.
The New York contractor that manufactures Pennsylvania's instant games makes all the decisions about the big winning tickets, Trees said. Lottery employees have no idea where they are.
"The pack number and winning tickets that may be in there -- there's no association between that, for obvious reasons, so people here have no idea how many winners and what winners are in that pack," Trees said.
West Newton, Westmoreland County, is the luckiest community in this part of the state. Since 2003, four residents there have hit for $100,000 or more on scratch-off tickets. That's one in every 700 people.
The thing is, the winners live in West Newton, but none of them bought their tickets there.
"It's my take that since we haven't sold any of those winners, even though the people are from West Newton, well, it's time we sold one," John Markle said. "So we probably have one in our rack, and you should stop in any day and pick one up, so odds are, we're holding one."
It was one year ago that a young man in New Bethlehem, Clarion County, made headlines by winning $1 million in a scratch-off lottery game. What didn't make the news is how many other times Jamie Hale has won.
"I think it was the fifth ticket I bought, I won $1,000 on it. I figured that was enough for me to play for the day," Hale said. "Next day, I thought, 'I'm still feeling lucky.'"
In one 48-hour period last year, Hale hit for $1,000 four times on scratch-off tickets.
His secret?
"Some days, I'll buy a whole roll," Hale said.
"A whole roll?" Parsons asked.
"Yes," Hale said.
A roll costs $300. And yes, buying a lot of tickets does improve your odds of winning.
But Hale has a few other secrets as well, like buying the last ticket on a roll.
"I'll wait until the end of the rolls on the $10 tickets, and I'll hit for either the $100 winners, I've hit for $250 winners on them, and a couple I hit for $500," Hale said.
Other winners told Team 4 that they'll only buy an even- or odd-numbered ticket.
Some said they'll never buy the first ticket on a roll.
Others claim that if they hit for any amount, they won't play the next ticket in that game.
And virtually all big winners said they check the lottery Web site to see how many top prizes on a game are left.
But don't be fooled by the lucky lottery players, experts say.
"What's not showing here are all the people who bought thousands and thousands of tickets and have very little to show for it, and there are many, many more of them than the person who was lucky in this case," Fischbeck said.
Here's something else you'll need to know if you play the scratch-off games: The Pennsylvania Lottery has changed the numeric code that it used to print on winning tickets.
A winner always had the winning amount placed in parentheses among other numbers. It was a fail-safe way to make sure you didn't toss out a winning ticket.
But the lottery has done away with that code. From now on, you'll have to scratch off the entire ticket to see if you're a winner.
(Transcript of a report by Team 4 investigator Jim Parsons that first aired Feb. 2, 2007, on WTAE Channel 4 Action News at 5 p.m.)
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