A man arrested for stealing 4,400 lottery tickets suffered the double ignominy of winning only a trifling sum from the stolen stubs, Metropolitan Police Department officers said Tuesday.
Yoshihiko Akao, 31, a company employee from Gotenba, Shizuoka Prefecture, was arrested for robbery after he allegedly pilfered 4,400 unused lottery tickets from a sales outlet in Tokyo.
Instead of the billions of yen he dreamed of, however, the tickets Akao spent all night checking to see how much he'd won were largely duds paying out from 100 to 200 yen. He allegedly pocketed only about 80,000 yen in cash.
Akao admits to the allegations against him. "I did it because I wanted some money so I could play around," he told the police.
Officials from Mizuho Bank, which runs the lottery, had little sympathy for Akao."If you do something wrong, you're gonna get caught," a bank official said.
Police said Akao broke into a lottery ticket sales outlet in Chiyoda-ku in the early hours of Aug. 27 last year and stuffed 4,400 of the 200 yen tickets into a rucksack.
When the winning lottery numbers came out, Akao spent an entire night scouring a newspaper to match the numbers on the tickets he had, police said. However, the winners he did find only offered payouts of tiny sums.
Theoretically, his chances of picking up an enormous sum were good. Although there is a one in 5 million chance of getting the top prize of 100 million yen, there is a one in 1,000 chance of winning 10,000 yen, yet Akao did not even get any of these tickets in the 4,400 he stole, police said.
Too many thieves believe the odds of 1:5 of having a winner that printed on the back of those tickets. They don't relieve that most of those prizes are a free ticket. Some honest lottery players have questioned whether a free ticket is really a prize since its only value is another chance to lose. Many states have ruled that it is, so they can offer very good odds of winning a prize by printing more free tickets. In a roll of 10,000 tickets, there could no money prizes and with 2,000 free tickets within the roll, there would be 1:5 odds of winning a prize.
Recently Ohio introduced that same idea into their jackpot game SuperLottoPlus for a match 3of6 to reduce their odds of winning to 1:54. Imagine how a winner would feel if they were offered 100 free plays for a 4of6 match instead of the $100 now payed. It could happen because Ohio is looking for a way to advertiseimprovedodds and payoutlessmoney in all their games.
Ha ha ha, jerk.
Never rob a store for lottery tickets. Rob banks.....thats where the money is!!
Chas
if you're going to steal lottery tickets, steal online ones. you have a better chance of winning some big money that way.
Too many thieves believe the odds of 1:5 of having a winner that printed on the back of those tickets. They don't relieve that most of those prizes are a free ticket. Some honest lottery players have questioned whether a free ticket is really a prize since its only value is another chance to lose. Many states have ruled that it is, so they can offer very good odds of winning a prize by printing more free tickets. In a roll of 10,000 tickets, there could no money prizes and with 2,000 free tickets within the roll, there would be 1:5 odds of winning a prize.
RJOh
RJOh,
Excellent points, which are the main reasons that I rarely play scratch games.
Recently Ohio introduced that same idea into their jackpot game SuperLottoPlus for a match 3of6 to reduce their odds of winning to 1:54. Imagine how a winner would feel if they were offered 100 free plays for a 4of6 match instead of the $100 now payed. It could happen because Ohio is looking for a way to advertise improved odds and payout less money in all their games.
RJOh
*Floats in from lurker worl
What is "pwned"?