[I]n August 2010 ... a group led by a 2007 MIT graduate named Yuran Lu found a way to win virtually all the prizes themselves. ... During a four-day stretch between Aug. 13 and Aug. 16, 2010, Lu and his MIT classmate James Harvey ... bought nearly $1.4 million in tickets.
I guess they had no trouble with question 3 on the YC application: Please tell us about the time you most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage.
> Every time Random Strategies turned in a batch of winning tickets, the Lottery generated a W-2G for every
member of the group. Even small investors in the MIT group -– for example, someone who won $800 over the course of a year -– would get dozens of W-2Gs every year and have to spend hours accounting for their winnings on their tax returns. The hassle prompted some people to cash out and leave the investment pool
Why couldn't the group invest in tickets under its own name and distribute earnings to investors in a slightly less paperwork-heavy fashion?
This reminds me of [1], where scratch-off games were founded to be using PRNG output improperly, allowing winning tickets to be identified without playing them.
That incident was quickly referenced in the article.
“One would have to be brain-dead not to notice that the avalanche [in sales] had begun in the days leading up to the August 16th draw,’’ said Mohan Srivastava, a Canadian statistician who gained fame in gambling circles when he found a flaw in a Canadian instant game, allowing him to accurately pick winning tickets 90 percent of the time.
Yuran Lu and James Harvey are co-founders of QuicklyChat (YC S12 - http://www.quicklychat.com/about.html) http://blog.ycombinator.com/quicklychat-yc-s12-brings-push-t...
I guess they had no trouble with question 3 on the YC application: Please tell us about the time you most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage.