Scammers have learned to cheat instant lottery ticket terminals

In Connecticut, authorities indicted six people suspected of cheating on machine guns selling 5 Card Cash lottery tickets. The owners and employees of several retail stores managed to deceive the slot machines and force them to print a much higher percentage of winning tickets than was intended by the lottery organizers.

As the investigation established, a group of individuals discovered a vulnerability in vending machines selling instant lottery tickets, in which the winner is determined immediately after receiving the ticket.
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On average, 5 Card Cash lottery machines issue 24% of winning tickets. But in the machines, the issuance of which was manipulated by the suspects, the number of winning tickets ranged from 58% to 76%. Fraudsters received winning tickets and cashed them.

The lottery owners suspended the operation of slot machines in November, when they noticed the appearance of an unusually large number of winning tickets. At the moment, the lottery is still not working.

The scheme of manipulation with automatic machines was approximately as follows: owners of institutions where automatic machines are installed can perform various administrative requests in order to receive some data from the lottery database.

The administrator can send several requests to the database at once or request to print several tickets at once. Such actions slow down the operation of the machine, and if, at the time of processing several requests, to initiate the sale of tickets, then on the screen before printing out paper copies of tickets you will see information whether the tickets are winning. Thus, the administrator has the opportunity to know in advance whether the tickets will win and to cancel the sale in case the tickets do not promise a win.