u/BigAd8172

I play a community lottery organised by a local Rugby club.

As with most lotteries, you pick your numbers and if those numbers get drawn you win the jackpot.

Last month, they announced that their long-running draw with a jackpot of £50000 would come to an end. To distribute the money, they would allow people to buy one-off tickets for the final draw. You could buy as many tickets as you wanted and every ticket you bought would correspond with one entry of your name into the final draw, with third place winning £5,000, second place winning £15,000 and first place winning £30,000.

In order to enter, you had to contact the organiser (let’s call her Mary) to tell her how many tickets you wanted. Anyway, this week, they did the draw and announced the winners. Mary somehow won first, second and third prizes, taking home £50,000.

I have no idea if it was rigged and have no way of proving if it was. I suspect that Mary may have won because she bought loads of tickets. However, the fact that she is the organiser makes me question if she may have broken the law. Presumably as the organiser she had access to how many people had entered the lottery. My guess is that she then bought her own entries based on how many entrants there were in order to maximise her chances of winning.

Is this a crime? She had access to information none of us did and used that information to increase her chances of winning. It certainly doesn’t look good. Any gambling/lottery experts out there?

Edit: for more info: there were 1000 entrants. I don’t know how many tickets Mary bought. The result was decided by an online wheel spin. There were no T&Cs when I entered all I had to do was tell Mary how many tickets I wanted. I can’t find any guidelines or rules for this competition.

[removed]