Maybe MIT should stand for "muggers in training."

Ten years after a group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology students and a professor famously took Las Vegas casinos to the cleaners counting cards, a new gambling scandal has arisen that involves MIT: a researcher and a group of students scammed the Massachussets Lottery.

Worse though, is that the Massachusetts Lottery knew they were doing it and chose to share in the windfall instead of protecting the integrity of the game.

The math whizzes were looking for a unique school project when a couple of them figured out that it would only take about $100,000 in tickets to guarantee success in the Cash WinFall game. When the jackpot rose to $2 million or more, group members bought in and shared in the prize money. By 2005, the group had earned about $8 million in winnings, reported the Boston Globe.

Despite an obvious conflict of interest in knowing that the game was compromised, officials continued to allow hundreds of thousands of $2 tickets to be bought by the merry band of thieves, the paper reported.

Here's how the scheme worked: If the jackpot in a lottery game isn't won, it usually is held over to the next drawing, creating a larger jackpot. In Cash WinFall the jackpot was capped at $2 million. When no one matched all the numbers, the jackpot would be redistributed - "rolled down" to make lesser prizes 5 to 10 times greater than usual, reported the Globe.

The game was so lucrative for the students, that they gave up jobs to stick it to the system on a full-time basis. Additionally, they were backed by investors who shared in the profits, according to a report by State Inspector General Gregory Sullivan cited by the paper.

Buying $600,000 worth of tickets virtually guaranteed a 15-20 percent return on investment. The initial premise was proven by James Harvey, who turned $1,000 in tickets into $3,000 Feb. 7, 2005. He immediately made the "project" larger, forming Random Strategies Investments and spending hours filling out betting slips and lining up eager financers. Within a few years, more groups popped up, but the MIT group figured out how to win the whole jackpot in a single drawing by 2010, reported the paper.

In an email discovered by the paper, a lottery supervisor shamelessly asks ""How do I become part of the club when I retire?"

【新聞快訊】

自10年前麻省理工的教授和學(xué)生橫掃拉斯維加斯賭場后，今天他們又開始轉(zhuǎn)戰(zhàn)麻省彩票業(yè)?？杀氖?，麻省的彩票業(yè)界即便知道麻省戰(zhàn)團的動作，也無法橫加干涉。據(jù)《波士頓全球》報道，由于彩票業(yè)是屬于獎金累積制度，只要累積獎金總額一到200萬美元，他們就開始大肆買入彩票，如此賺取獎金，對此彩票業(yè)界只能放任自流，無法干涉。

麻省名校高才利用所學(xué)，在彩壇大肆榨取巨額獎金。而眼見此行業(yè)如此紅利滿滿，另一些學(xué)生也辭掉了原本的工作，全身心投入其中。由他們背后的投資人出資，他們運用所學(xué)，共享其利。根據(jù)測算，買足60萬美金的彩票就能轉(zhuǎn)回成本，而且還能賺回百分之15-20的回報。學(xué)生中還有有能者成立了風(fēng)投戰(zhàn)略公司用以運營操作。短短幾年數(shù)家公司如雨后春筍般冒了出來，專業(yè)尋求短期高回報的投資方案。難怪連彩票業(yè)監(jiān)管人都眼紅這樣的收入，想著退休以后也要加入這樣的陣營呢！