A couple of days ago, I wrote about how a mathematician found out that the scratch games in France are not random, as is supposed to be the case (you know, to make it FAIR), but rather, very, very fixed. France 3’s exposé on La Francaise des jeux, a state sponsored lotto and scratch games company, revealed many things.

1. The scratch game, “Vegas” is definitely FIXED – apparently, the winners are not random, and many players as well as tabac owners (the store owners that sell the games) know about this. There are a certain amount of winners per bundle of games, and so what people do is go to the tabac upon delivery of the new bundle. Some players would just buy the whole bundle. Others would sit in the cafe/bar and watch to see if others were buying the Vegas scratch games. If, for example, they observed that all of the games sold had no winners, the person watching OR the tabac owner would buy the rest of the games, knowing that there are winning games remaining. Instant winner guaranteed!

2. To corroborate his theory of this fraudulent system, the retired mathematician asked many different tabac owners to document the results of the Vegas scratch games. Over a period of 2 years, all of the results were the same: same percentage of winners, same percentage of losers.

3. The mathematician went to the La Française des jeux to report to them that their system wasn’t random. Duh. I’m sure they knew that. Thankfully, they did not send out a hitman to get him, but did attempt to bribe him with 350,000 euros to put a lid on it, and after a year, they promised to give him a bonus of 100,000 euros – all to just shut up about it. He didn’t. Dude! I would’ve taken that pay off! Actually, it wasn’t a matter of honor that he rejected their offer, instead, it was because he wanted more, in the tune of 2 million euros. The mathmatician, as a mathematician, figured that he could’ve won 2 million himself, the biggest win of the scratch game. La Française des jeux said no way. Does anyone want to bet that a fatal “accident” will be coming his way? (I hope not, but geez.)

4. La Française des jeux has denied any wrongdoing. In addition, they’ve declared that there is no fixed system. They claim total innocence in the matter YET they just announced that they changed the algorhythm of the production of the Vegas games. Beautiful, isn’t that? Them: “NO! we didn’t do anything wrong, but we changed the system.” They must really think people are that stupid to believe them.

5. A bit of a sidenote: La Française des jeux are also the same folks responsible for any online gambling in France. They have the monopoly on these online gambling games and the government will not allow any other companies to compete with them. Basically, the monopoly is a state-sponsored mafia business. Admittedly, I am not very thrilled with the online gambling industry but what one guy in France had to do (because he wanted to start an online gambling business), was to incorporate it in Gibraltar. In other words, you have to go elsewhere, outside of France, to start a business like that.

Tags: france, french, scratch+games, lotto, La+Française+des+jeux, crimes, lies, gambling