A GROUP of Ivy League graduates scored a $6.3million lottery windfall with an incredible 18-month long streak of 66 winning tickets.
At least four Princeton University graduates, led by analyst Manuel Montori IV, raked in the cash with wins in Indiana, Missouri and Washington and the District of Columbia.
At the height of their success in September 2020, Montori cashed in 61 winning Hoosier Lottery MEGA CA$H scratch-off tickets in a single day, The Indianapolis Star reported.
But he wasn’t working alone, and appears to have been helped by other Princeton alumni including Matthew Gibbons, Hannah Davinroy and Zoë Buonaiuto.
The group are all affiliated with Montori’s company, the Black Swan Capital LLC.
Their biggest win was from a Hoosier Lottery scratch-off in October 2020, netting them $5million.
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But there might be more to their run of success than just luck.
Lottery experts claim that the group relied on public data from the ticket results to increase their chances of winnings.
The group would reportedly go on buying sprees of scratch-off tickets for games that were coming to an end, but where big prizes were still to be won.
In Indiana, the group bought up hundreds of tickets for the MEGA CA$H game in the final months before it ended, store owners told the Star.
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“Basically, they would clean us out,” said Darian Crites, a manager at Smoke ‘n’ Lotto in Bloomington, Indiana, an hour south of Indianapolis.
Buonaiuto and Davinroy allegedly bought 400 tickets at a time during several visits to the store, and even asked to be told when more tickets were delivered.
The pair eventually purchased 1,600 tickets, at a cost of $48,000, Credit told The Indy Star.
And at least one of them was a winner, as Montori cashed in a $10,000 ticket that was purchased at Smoke ‘n’ Lotto.
The other 60 winning MEGA CA$H tickets that Montori cashed were from more than 40 gas stations, liquor stores and outlets across the state and bought his total haul to $88,000, the Star reports.
The Hoosier Lottery updates their website daily and publishes information about how many prizes have been claimed.
But experts have warned that just buying up hundreds of lottery tickets does not guarantee a win, and Montori’s group could have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on non-winners.
The Star even estimates that the group could have spent $2.3million on tickets alone, and that doesn’t include the travel to gas stations and lottery outlets.
Without the one ticket that netted a $5million jackpot, it’s possible that the group would have made a massive loss on the scheme.
The best advice is not to spend more on any form of gambling than you are prepared to lose.
Montori is not the only Ivy Leaguer with a lottery trick up his sleeve.
Harvard statatician Professor Mark Glickman previously told how his math strategy will result in lottery winnings.
But he warned that the lottery odds are heavily favored against players.
States are said to keep about 30% of the tens of billions of dollars spent on the games.
