Lottery Fraud
The French lottery, La Francaise Des Jeux, may be controlled more by marketing executives than the laws of chance. The Le Monde newspaper had revealed that a £315,000 out-of-court settlement had been made to a player who claimed that the system is designed to produce regular small wins.
The case begun as the plaintiff, a 60 year-old businessman from eastern France, claims he discovered the scam behind the 29 million regular scratch cards. He bought 400 batches (of 50 cards each), worth %u20AC150 each and concluded that distribution of the winning numbers was governed by a controlled system and not chance.
La Francaise Des Jeux dismisses most of the plaintiff's claims but admitted its cards were distributed in a way that was preponderantly random rather than entirely random. It denied making misleading statements, and pointed out that the intervention of chance can be total or preponderant.
The French lottery has denied seeking a deal with the plaintiff, but the case opened a legal and media battle. The French television stations have censored some of the allegations out of fear of losing millions of national lottery advertising revenue.
