Lottery: Nothing fishy about 7-7-7-7

Thirty years ago this month, a Pennsylvania Lottery announcer and some pals fixed the Daily Number, which came up 6-6-6.

Ten years ago, the scandal was immortalized by the film Lucky Numbers, with John Travolta as mastermind Nick Perry (born Nicholas Pericles Katsafanas), who served a two-year prison term.

So, when last week's Big 4 came up 7-7-7-7, producing a staggeringly high payout ($7.77 million) to a freakishly high number of winners (3,107), some people wondered:

Could the fix be in again?

Pretty darn unlikely, for many reasons, a state lottery official said.

"If we never drew triples and quads, that would be grounds for suspicion," said spokeswoman Kirstin Alvanitakis.

"When you look at the entire history of the Pennsylvania Lottery, triples and quads have been drawn about as often as one would expect and probabilities would predict."

Besides, procedures tightened greatly after the so-called Triple Six Fix.

"Today, the lottery employs a full-time drawings staff and a drawing manager to oversee and conduct daily drawings, and the lottery's security director oversees and audits this staff," Alvanitakis said. Two senior witnesses, studio personnel and accountants also take part on a rotating basis.

"While viewers only see a minute-long drawing on television every evening at 6:59 p.m., each lottery drawing takes up to two or more hours to complete," she said. "A great deal of behind-the-scenes preparation and a lengthy checklist of security procedures protect the integrity of each drawing."

"Each official evening drawing is preceded by 12 test draws and followed by three more test draws," she said. "These are conducted to certify the performance of the drawings equipment and randomness of the official drawing."

The 1980 scheme involved injecting latex paint into all the balls but 4 and 6, then betting all the combinations of those two numbers: 4-4-4, 4-4-6, 4-6-4, 4-6-6, 6-4-4, 6-4-6, 6-6-4 and the winning 6-6-6.

"Today, sets of balls are weighed every evening to ensure the veracity of the balls, and ball sets are securely sealed and protected at the completion of each drawing," Alvanitakis explained.

Those aren't the only safeguards, she said.

The fixers got found partly because they had hundreds and hundreds of tickets to cash, which put them on store surveillance tapes.

Although the March 31 evening payout was nearly 16 times the cash taken in, credit the extreme popularity of triples and quadruples - not conspiracy.

That means many more winners of the predetermined amounts. These aren't jackpot games, where the winners split the pie.

The 7-7-7-7 payout wasn't even a record.

That's because a quadruple once hit on Christmas Eve, when stores get jammed with last-minute shoppers.

On Dec. 24, 1990, 2-2-2-2 hit and paid out $8.65 million.

The Daily Number topped that two years ago, when 7-7-7 came up during the April 30 evening drawing, and $8.96 million was distributed among 36,099 winners.

Compare that to yesterday's midday Daily Number, when 3-7-3 produced 858 winners, who collected in total just $120,410.

Yesterday's midday Big 4 drawing, which came up 0-9-6-9, minted merely 88 winners, who tapped lottery coffers for a measly $26,800.

Yes, $26,800 is peanuts compared to $7.77 million for 7-7-7-7, but when 7-7-7-7 was last drawn - on the evening of Dec. 28, 2003 - the payout was $4.99 million.

Despite that largesse, the Big 4 game made a profit last month, Alvanitakis said.

No doubt a nice chunk of that surplus came from thousands and thousands of losing bets on all 10 quadruples.