TX woman's $18 Pick 5 play at Retama returns $1.25 mil

[cal828]

Seems like I can recall another time that a person or persons won a huge payoff like that and it wasn't just picking random numbers. My memory doesn't work so good anymore and sometimes I can't remember what I did last week, but it seems like it was a guy or a couple of guys from South Dakota that won the pick 6 on Breeder's Cup Day with a small ticket. As I recall it was when Richard Mandella won 3 or 4 races that day including the Classic with Pleasantly Perfect. So I guess as improbable as it seems that someone could handicap it, it's not impossible. However, all that may just be a false memory on my part.

[ranger5830]

Originally Posted by cal828

Seems like I can recall another time that a person or persons won a huge payoff like that and it wasn't just picking random numbers. My memory doesn't work so good anymore and sometimes I can't remember what I did last week, but it seems like it was a guy or a couple of guys from South Dakota that won the pick 6 on Breeder's Cup Day with a small ticket. As I recall it was when Richard Mandella won 3 or 4 races that day including the Classic with Pleasantly Perfect. So I guess as improbable as it seems that someone could handicap it, it's not impossible. However, all that may just be a false memory on my part.

As I remember the story, this was from the 93 breeders cup at Santa Anita, the other time that Mandella had four wins. One of the two tickets that hit the national pick-7 had played numbers 1 and 11 in the penultimate race, the BC turf. He then accidentally punched 1 and 11 for the classic, but decided to just keep the ticket as played for a $16 total. Arcangues was #11 in the classic so he wound up winning $1.6 million by accident.

[cal828]

http://www.drf.com/news/pick-6-winner-faces

Here it is. The year was 2003 and it was an $8 bet for $2.7 million. Ticket had 4 singles. It was a couple of guys from South Dakota. I think it occurred the next year or so after some college buddies tried to scam the Pick 6 and ended up going to jail, I think. I can't remember all the details of that one, but I'm sure a lot of people will remember that occurred which made a lot of people skeptical that these two guys could have won legitimately with such a small ticket.

[cal828]

73 year old wheels in my brain turn pretty slowly these days, but I think I remember more of the details of the scam mentioned earlier. There were 3 college buddies involved. One of them worked for one of the companies that manufacture and service the betting machines at some of the tracks. He made his own winning ticket and enlisted the help of one of his buddies to cash it. Not sure what the 3rd guy did. Maybe he came up with the scam and talked the others in to it. Nobody believed they had the winning ticket because it too had 4 singles Not sure how they got caught, but they did.

[richard burch]

Originally Posted by cal828

73 year old wheels in my brain turn pretty slowly these days, but I think I remember more of the details of the scam mentioned earlier. There were 3 college buddies involved. One of them worked for one of the companies that manufacture and service the betting machines at some of the tracks. He made his own winning ticket and enlisted the help of one of his buddies to cash it. Not sure what the 3rd guy did. Maybe he came up with the scam and talked the others in to it. Nobody believed they had the winning ticket because it too had 4 singles Not sure how they got caught, but they did.

Yes...i remember seeing a show on it. i think it was in the old HRTV days. Recall one of them worked at a NY track.

[jms62]

Story getting traction.. My mom mentioned it to me this morning...

[declansharbor]

Originally Posted by cal828

73 year old wheels in my brain turn pretty slowly these days, but I think I remember more of the details of the scam mentioned earlier. There were 3 college buddies involved. One of them worked for one of the companies that manufacture and service the betting machines at some of the tracks. He made his own winning ticket and enlisted the help of one of his buddies to cash it. Not sure what the 3rd guy did. Maybe he came up with the scam and talked the others in to it. Nobody believed they had the winning ticket because it too had 4 singles Not sure how they got caught, but they did.

I remember greed being a factor as to how/why they got caught, as if they printed multiple winning tickets instead of just one ticket, or something to that tune. Had they just scammed with one ticket, the red flags wouldn’t have gone up (as much) and they most likely get away with it.

[jms62]

Originally Posted by declansharbor

I remember greed being a factor as to how/why they got caught, as if they printed multiple winning tickets instead of just one ticket, or something to that tune. Had they just scammed with one ticket, the red flags wouldn’t have gone up (as much) and they most likely get away with it.

I think I recall that they singled the races already run.

[cal828]

Originally Posted by jms62

I think I recall that they singled the races already run.

You are right. There is a big long explanation on Wikipedia that explains what happened, but to cut to the chase, the mastermind of the scam was a senior computer person with Autotote. He altered tickets after the first four races had been run and then went all/all in the last two races on the ticket. His ticket was around $1100. This was not the first ticket that he altered. He also did this with some other bets and got away with it so decided to go for one big score with his buddies. This was the year that Volponi won the Classic and paid $41. Strangely, he was only sentenced to a year in prison while the one bud got a couple of years and the other almost 3. He ratted them out and got a lesser sentence.

[raininthrees]

bet construction for her $18 dollar investment was as follows,

she only singled,
Limousine Liberal in Race 8, Maraud in Race 9 and Yoshida in Race 11
while using 3 horses in Race 10 the Pat Day and 6 horses in Race 12 the Derby

If Justify happened to faulted, she did also have Good Magic.

[richard burch]

Originally Posted by raininthrees

bet construction for her $18 dollar investment was as follows,

she only singled,
Limousine Liberal in Race 8, Maraud in Race 9 and Yoshida in Race 11
while using 3 horses in Race 10 the Pat Day and 6 horses in Race 12 the Derby

If Justify happened to faulted, she did also have Good Magic.

I almost fainted when I read that.



Really!....Sure?....How do you know this?

If true She is the GREATEST person EVER!!!!

[raininthrees]

true info, as being in this sports/racing game/vocation
fortunate enough & work hard enough to get info. others
can’t and asap too.

don’t feel bad I would have fainted too
but I was too busy stacking my 2k worth
of PK5 dead soldier tickets

sux when you know where the true value bets
are but fail to capitalize. on to the next...

[ranger5830]

I know that it's a little late to be asking this, but is there any word of the location/cost/structure of the other two winning tickets? I'm sure its not as good a story as this lady but the other people obviously made huge scores as well.

[ateamstupid]

Originally Posted by raininthrees

bet construction for her $18 dollar investment was as follows,

she only singled,
Limousine Liberal in Race 8, Maraud in Race 9 and Yoshida in Race 11
while using 3 horses in Race 10 the Pat Day and 6 horses in Race 12 the Derby

If Justify happened to faulted, she did also have Good Magic.

I'm late here, but this is false. There were only live Pick 5 tickets to four horses in the Derby, so she couldn't have been more than four deep.