Connecticut police arrested and charged six suspects for crimes related to altering lottery terminals to issue more winning tickets than usual, reports the Hartford Courant.
The six are: Vikas Patel, 32, from Windsor, Pranav Patel, 32, from Bloomfield, Sedat Kurutan from Naugatuck, Moinuddin Saiyed from Norwalk, Prakuni Patel and Rahul Gandhi, both from Wallingford.
The first two were arrested on Friday, March 19, while the last four were arrested between February 29 and March 7. All have posted bail and are now free. They are scheduled to appear in court in the coming weeks.
The suspects face first-degree theft charges, first-degree computer crime charges, and game tampering.
Prosecutors say they are all store owners or store employees, so at their workplace, tickets for the 5 Card Cash game have been sold in the past.
The 5 Card Cash game consists of tickets that users can buy, during which the game cards are printed. If the five cards form a winning poker hand, then the purchaser can receive a cash amount based on the share they received.
Authorities suspended the 5 Card Cash game in Connecticut last November after discovering that there were more winning tickets than the game's winning range of factors should be technically acceptable.
Investigators for the Department of Consumer Protection and the Connecticut Lottery have discovered that multiple employees are intentionally misusing lottery tickets to distribute winning tickets that will later pay cash . Authorities said that in addition to the six arrested so far, more arrests are expected.
Police added that the suspects exploited a glitch in the lottery terminals to see if the next ticket printed was a winning one or not. The terminal would request a report of the database, which slowed down the terminal's speed of operation.
Subsequently, they would purchase a new ticket, but the delay of the terminal station would allow them to see the ticket's content before printing. Seeing that the ticket was missing, the staff would cancel the purchase operation and interrupt the printing of the ticket.
In this way, employees repeatedly abused the terminals in their store. Investigators say they found terminals that printed winning tickets with a winning percentage of 76%, 67%, 59% and 58%, but that overall, the abused terminals produced winning tickets in 24% of sales.
