1980 Pennsylvania Lottery scandal
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The 1980 Pennsylvania Lottery scandal, colloquially known as the Triple Six Fix, was a plot to rig the Daily Number, a three digit game the Pennsylvania Lottery offers. All of the balls except 4 and 6 were weighted, meaning that the drawing was almost sure to be a combination of only 4s and 6s. The scheme was successful in that 666, an expected result, was drawn on April 24, 1980; however, the unusual betting patterns alerted authorities to the matter. The chief conspirators were sent to prison, and most of the fraudulently acquired winnings were never paid out.
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[edit] Planning the conspiracy
The plan was masterminded by Nick Perry (1916-2003), the announcer of the Daily Number. Perry was born Nicholas Pericles Katsafanas in the Morningside neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He attended Peabody High School and Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. After serving in the U.S. Navy in World War II, Perry began a career as a radio broadcaster in Charleston, West Virginia. Perry entered early television broadcasting on Pittsburgh’s WDTV, the forerunner of KDKA. Perry switched to the WTAE television station in Pittsburgh in 1958 working as a staff announcer. Later, Perry became a news and weather reporter and was the host of local sports shows like "Bowling for Dollars" and "Championship Bowling." In 1977, Perry became the host of the live nightly broadcast of the Pennsylvania Lottery, held in the studios of WTAE.
Perry first discussed his idea with two of his business partners whom he worked with in the vending business, brothers Peter Maragos and Jack Maragos. Once committed to the plan, Perry approached local Pittsburgh lettering expert and WTAE art director Joseph Bock about creating weighted ping-pong balls that were replicas of the official balls used in the lottery machines. Bock agreed to help, and experimented with powder and other substances until he settled on white latex paint. Bock performed careful experiments to determine just the right amount of paint to use so that the weighted balls could fly up off the bottom of the machine, but not high enough to reach the vacuum tube so the ball would be drawn out of the machine. The men thought it would be too risky to weight nine of the ten balls for each machine, so they decided to leave both the 4 and 6 balls unchanged. Those would be the only balls light enough to actually be drawn. This would reduce the number of possible combinations to eight: 444, 446, 464, 466, 644, 646, 664, and 666. Bock then applied labels on the balls (obtained from an art supply store) that matched those of the originals.
Perry received access to the machines and ping pong balls through the involvement of Pennsylvania Lottery official Edward Plevel. Plevel left the machines and balls unguarded for several minutes on a few occasions. Perry also got WTAE stagehand Fred Luman to actually switch the original balls with the weighted ones before and after the drawing. Bock then took the rigged balls back to his studio and burned them in a paint can a half-hour after the on-air drawing was done.
[edit] The drawing
On the night of April 24, 1980, more than six million viewers watched as 666 was pulled as the winning number. Perry was only an announcer and never drew the winning numbers; this was always done by a senior citizen volunteer, as the lottery benefits senior citizens in Pennsylvania. Lottery authorities and local bookmakers became suspicious when they noticed that a large number of tickets were purchased for the above eight numbers, and a handful of players came forward to claim approximately $1.8 million of the then-record $3.5 million payout. At first, they had no actual evidence that the drawing was fixed.
The Maragos brothers, on the date of the drawing, traveled around Pennsylvania buying large quantities of tickets containing the eight possible numbers. The investigation was broken open when an anonymous tip led to a bar near Philadelphia where the Maragos brothers bought a large number of lottery tickets. An employee remembered the Maragos brothers coming into the bar with a platinum blonde woman and laying down a large amount of cash to buy lottery tickets, all on the eight specific numbers. The employee recalled that while he printed the tickets, one of the Maragos brothers made a pay phone call, spoke in a foreign language, and held up the phone so the listener could hear the lottery machine printing the tickets. Investigators pulled the phone records and traced the call to the WTAE announcer's booth in the studio where the drawing was done. This strongly implicated Perry (who, like the Maragoses, could speak Greek), but it was also clear that he could not have acted alone. Further investigation and questioning of the Maragos brothers eventually implicated the rest of the men.
It was later revealed that the Maragos brothers also placed bets on the eight numbers with local bookmakers who had illegal numbers games that used the lottery drawing as the winning result. The brothers also told friends and family which numbers to play. This extra bit of greed may have contributed to the conspiracy's downfall, with the greater influx of slanted bets.
[edit] Aftermath
A grand jury was brought forth and charges were leveled against all six men. Plevel was convicted and spent two years in prison. Bock and Luman pleaded guilty in exchange for lighter sentences. The Maragos brothers avoided jail time by agreeing to testify against Perry. Much of the $1.8 million was recovered from the Maragos brothers, as were numerous lottery tickets.
Perry was convicted of criminal conspiracy, criminal mischief, theft by deception, rigging a publicly exhibited contest, and perjury in 1981. He was sentenced to 7 years in prison. He served two years at Camp Hill State Penitentiary and spent another year at a halfway house in the East Liberty section of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Perry remained on parole until March 1989. He held a number of jobs after prison including an unsuccessful attempt to return to broadcasting in the late 1980s. Perry died in Attleboro, Massachusetts on April 22, 2003, having never admitted to any role in the plot.
After the scandal, the Pennsylvania Lottery and other drawings began taking greater precautions to guard against rigging.
In Pennsylvania, the number 666 is still often referred to as a "Nick Perry."[citation needed] The combination 666 came up as the winning number in the nightly drawing most recently on December 21, 2007 -- the 16th time in the Lottery's history.
[edit] Cultural impact
The 2000 film Lucky Numbers, starring John Travolta and Lisa Kudrow, was loosely based on Perry’s story. In 2006, the Game Show Network aired a documentary in their "Anything to Win" series about the scandal, complete with anecdotes from former WTAE and current KDKA-TV news anchor Don Cannon.
