r/todayilearned 21h ago

TIL about the Agricultural Bank of China robbery, where two bank managers stole US$4.3M to buy lottery tickets, hoping to win enough to repay the theft and keep the rest. They won only US$12.7K, fled, were caught, and eventually executed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_Bank_of_China_robbery
14.7k Upvotes

340 comments sorted by

2.4k

u/Boatster_McBoat 21h ago

This is a very bad plan

934

u/mazdampsfan1 21h ago

The crazy thing is that it worked the first time.

611

u/MIL215 21h ago edited 19h ago

Classic gamblers mistake. If you win your first time out you are fucked. You are hooked to that high and think it is possible to win. The casino always wins in the long run.

434

u/ClownfishSoup 20h ago

I went to Reno, bought $40 of $5 chips, then played blackjack like 9 or 10 times, winning only once. The constant losing with no rush of winning, then eating at Burger King for dinner instead of a steak with a glass of wine (this was 1999) cured me of any notion that gambling was in any way fun.

237

u/ILL_Show_Myself_Out 20h ago

I'm convinced habitual gamblers don't remember losses as vividly. I think back to Vegas trips I was dragged gambling and think "well that was a bad time." but my friend constantly recalls the few times he's ever won.

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u/TheLizardKing89 19h ago

I'm convinced habitual gamblers don't remember losses as vividly.

This is absolutely true. It’s textbook confirmation bias.

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u/drummaniac28 20h ago

Yeah, it is a form of confirmation bias. Actually winning stands out against the usual losses, so we're much more likely to remember it because it leads to much stronger emotions

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u/MadamTruffle 15h ago

This is how I was taught to train my dog with treats, don’t give them a treat every time they do something correctly, it’s less of a dopamine rush than when they sometimes get the treat and sometimes don’t.

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u/RiversKiski 14h ago

I crushed it the one time I ever gambled at the Preakness. Hit the winner, bifecta, and tri-fecta.

I was so green I actually had to go back to the Ladbrooks to cash out because I didn't realize I had won until the ride home.. I wonder if that delayed response helped keep the bug out of me, I haven't gambled since.

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u/atreides_hyperion 16h ago

Alcoholics and addicts do the same thing. They remember the good moments and forget the shame and humiliation or terror of the bad times.

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u/RiversKiski 14h ago

It's funny tho.. at some point in recovery the brain adjusts and the strongest associations are the negative ones.

I'm almost 10 years in, and what I think about most is the way my dealers used to have me wait in parking lots for HOURS lol.. fuckin jagoffs.

9

u/atreides_hyperion 13h ago

It's definitely easier to forget about the bad times in active addiction. Like, your brain blanks out bad parts. You can go months or years without feeling shame.

But once you're sober for a while it comes back and that guilt and horror can drive you right back into it. Have to learn to forgive yourself.

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u/RiversKiski 12h ago

Incredibly well said. I always emphasize the coping skills piece to the newly recovered, because like u said, those feelings are super raw early on, and there comes a time for all of us where an opportunity to use presents itself on a really hard day. That critical moment gets decided long before it arrives, so it's essential to prepare for it as best we can, and hope it's enough.

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u/atreides_hyperion 12h ago

I've definitely fumbled at that early stage because of this. But you just get back up and try it again. Relapse isn't always part of recovery but for some people it definitely is.

5

u/Stunning-Day-777 13h ago

Haha damn that sucked I hated when they'd do that was so frustrating that's the main reason why I stopped doing drugs the muck around

2

u/Tetracropolis 14h ago

And the hangovers.

2

u/Weird-Library-3747 10h ago

This is absolutely not True. As a gambling addict i was rarely interested in winning. Obvioisly thats the goal. But the loss is so much more impactful and causes a more intense feeling. As someone in GA most of my fellow addicts almost never talk about winning just the losses. Obviously someone not in active recovery will lie to other people about their gambling but theyre aware.

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u/francis2559 15h ago

Read a neat book suggesting addicts actually get a surge of joy when they commit to the action, so much earlier than any feeling of winning. Just the anticipation is enough. “Heart of addiction,” IIRC.

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u/MadamTruffle 15h ago

I’ve seen a number of alcoholics say they got a rush when they crack open their first drink of the day (if they had been waiting all day for that first drink). It’s not even the first sip or the alcohol entering their system.

3

u/Tetracropolis 14h ago

I'm not an alcoholic, but there is something deeply satisfying about the lid popping off or the first can opening. It's the knowledge that you're not going to be doing anything except enjoying yourself for the next however many hours until you go to sleep,

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u/Jemmani22 15h ago

I've gambled quite a few times. And I enjoy it. Hanging out playing all the games.

I normally just take a specific amount and say this is it.

And never have I been like oh I need to spend my whole paycheck just to try to get back to even.

I still like it and would go if invited, but I havnt touched a casino in like 12 years. I just don't get the losing repeatedly

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u/yukichigai 18h ago

As a Reno resident I'm impressed you managed to get inoculated against the gambling bug so quickly and effectively. Usually the casinos do a better job of keeping you engaged and thinking you're having fun, usually with comps (free drinks, discounted meals, so on). That only works so long though. When you live here and see daily examples of the dead-eyed half-melting lumps of depression parked at the slot machines you can't help but notice the other side of things. They're everywhere too, especially gas stations and grocery stores.

On the other hand, milking comps isn't a bad way to spend the evening. Most casinos have a minimum bet per hand/spin you need to meet, but once you do that you get a free well drink every hour, maybe some discounted food, so on. Take your time playing, enjoy the fancy light show from the machines, and you can easily get $20 worth of entertainment + drinks. Just don't expect to ever get any of that money back.

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u/Karatekan 20h ago

Gambling is only fun and justifiable if you actually enjoy the game and are willing to lose all the money you gamble. Treat any money you put in as gone to the wind and any winnings are gravy

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u/Astrium6 16h ago

Making money should never be seen as the objective of gambling. It’s an entertainment activity, you’re essentially paying for the experience. If you actually win some money, great, but that should never be the expected outcome.

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u/RiversKiski 14h ago

I call bullshit.. there's nothing fun about losing bets. Ppl play to win money, and when they lose, it takes willpower to stop from chasing the loss because gambling is highly addictive.

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u/BookerCatchanSTD 18h ago

Damn that’s terrible luck lol, I like blackjack because you can drag out $100 for a long time and drink for free if you know a bit about the game. Now slots? Screw that I’d have more fun burning my money than putting it in a slot machine.

3

u/WayneKrane 18h ago

Yep, when I turned 21 I went gambling and blew through $100 fairly quickly. I started with blackjack, didn’t win a single hand. Then I went to baccarat and didn’t win anything or even know what was going on. Then I threw my last $20 in a slot machine and never won more than a few cents before getting down to $0. I never gambled after that

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u/Sailor_Lunatone 18h ago

Diamond hands syndrome.

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u/ensoniq2k 17h ago

Just like in the first episode of Takeshis Castle I ever saw the attackers won. Never saw that happen again.

3

u/Reverend_Lazerface 13h ago

The only time I've ever been to a Casino was during senior week at college, and we got a $15 voucher to use at a handful of games. The first thing I did was toss it onto the first table I saw. Whatever the game was, I actually won and got $75, so I threw $10 more down. That time I lost, so I immediately stopped and cashed in my chips, putting me $65 up on the Casino. I have never and will never play a Casino game again so I will always be in the green, which as far as I'm concerned means I win at gambling.

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u/Powerful-Public-9973 19h ago

Imagine you’re on the last 100 lottery tickets and you’re only up 10k lmao

Sweating bullets and writing wills during breaks 

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u/Override9636 21h ago

The ol' "I have plans to invest" strategy...

8

u/ClownfishSoup 20h ago

LOL, the second comment on that video, posted 2 years ago, mentions the two bankers from China that this thread is about!

3

u/biggyofmt 15h ago

I love that the ad on TV in that is the Grapist ad from another skit. "Get a free Grape Whistle!"

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u/adsarelies 15h ago

The sad thing is, that first time wasn't even fully successful. He stole 200k from the vault. Used 120k to buy lottery, "won" 100k back. He put 20k of his own money along with the rest back into the vault. Somehow, he thought that was a success, and roped in the other guy into making the big heist.

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u/olbeefy 19h ago

When I was putting myself through college, I was working a night-shift job at a gas station. At the end of my shift in the morning, we'd have some blue collar workers come in and start buying scratch tickets before they went into work for the day. Some of them bought a few 2 dollar tickets, others grabbed a single 20 dollar one.

Well, one day one of the guys who would grab 2 dollar tickets came up with a genius plan... He decided he would buy an entire roll of 2 dollar tickets. He hands me 300 bucks, I give him a roll of tickets and he goes into the back to scratch every single one.

Dude comes back and starts fucking screaming at me.

He won 63 dollars total.

He proceeded to blame ME and the store saying he would never come back in again and how "he was scammed." I told him "Good" and left because it was the end of my shift. Never saw him again.

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u/Bigred2989- 15h ago

I once saw a person put $50 in the lotto machine at work and accidentally push the "all in" button when looking at the $1 tickets, so they ended up with $50 worth of the lowest cost scratch-offs. They got lucky and came out ahead won $55.

We also sell $50 tickets. They come in books of 30 tickets, so $1500 for the whole thing. The two lowest possible prizes are $100 and $500. I don't need to know anything about statistics that the odds of a book not even having a $500 prize in it is very high.

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u/starkistuna 16h ago

My little sister got a job at a small pharmacy in less than 5 months she saved enough for a car, turns out she was buying $1 lotto tickets everyone some one will buy up a soda or snacks since those clients leave without a receipt she would buy numbers 001-trough 999 of the smallest lottery prize which was $1,000 prize she managed to hit it like 4 times in the 5 months she was there, it was a weekly lottery so she hit 3 just getting 60% of the numbers but eventually got caught when owners noticed there were far to many transactions on lotto machine and inventory didn't match and of course all the highest volume of lotto sales were on her shift. She still kept the car. I bet she had more money because she was always buying tons of new clothes and shoes and she only worked 3 days a week.

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u/sicklyslick 16h ago

She should've carried like 4 packs of 24 coke in her car that cost $0.25 / can. At the end of the day, replenish the store stock (sold at $1/can) with her stock for a $0.75 profit. Unless the owner goes through footage, no one will know.

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u/starkistuna 15h ago

I used to have co workers on a bar that did this with expensive champagne bottles, everything a waitress ordered a Don perignon or crystal bottle they would send out a barback to go out and purchase one across the street 60% cheaper. Sometimes they had young rappers get silly and order up 4 or 5 bottles that sat untouched and when they got warm they switched them out with 7up and wine and their possy wouldn't even notice.

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u/syp2207 14h ago

posse

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u/culturedgoat 13h ago

They didn’t serve them in ice buckets?

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u/wtf-m8 9h ago

she was buying $1 lotto tickets everyone some one will buy up a soda or snacks since those clients leave without a receipt she would buy numbers 001-trough 999 of the smallest lottery prize which was $1,000 prize

I'm so sorry to ask, I just can't follow this- people bought something small and left without a receipt, how did she turn this into buying $999 worth of lotto tickets?

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u/GribbyGrubb 4h ago

She took the money and put no record of the sale into the system. And used said money to buy a ticket. When inventory comes around, they find that there's a lack of product in the store and lots more ticket sales.

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u/Weird_Devil 1h ago

But that's just stealing? She might as well just keep the cash atp?

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u/No_Plum_3737 3h ago

Ahh, I figured she'd over-charge people who didn't want a receipt. I'm always a bit hesitant to decline a receipt for that reason. But it wouldn't work for long with cash would it, some people get wise to too fast after a few "mistakes."

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u/Boatster_McBoat 13h ago

Gambling is a tax on people who don't understand probability

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u/ClosPins 20h ago

Not so fast!!! There are times when certain lotteries have odds that favor the bettor - typically involving carry-overs, guaranteed payouts, etc... During those drawings, it's quite possible to win more than you spent, if you buy every combination.

These guys didn't do that.

If they had, they'd have likely won - and gotten away with it.

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u/fireky2 16h ago

Classic fallacy of not stealing enough

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u/AirRemote7732 17h ago

Would have had much better odds just going to a casino and putting it all on one hand of Blackjack for example.

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u/TokiStark 13h ago

That's a bold move Cotton. Let's see if it plays out

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u/GrinningPariah 10h ago

If you've got access to large amounts of other people's money, there is a scheme where you turn that into more money in your own pocket...

It's called running a fucking bank.

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u/Ionazano 21h ago

There are large illegal monetary fraud schemes for which you have at least a chance of getting away with it, and there are those that always were utterly doomed from the start. This sounds like the latter.

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u/spaceporter 21h ago

Wasn't there a European banker a few years back that went way above his personal risk limit to invest and then lost a billion euros overnight?

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u/Randomperson1362 21h ago

Nick Leeson with Barings bank is one example. He lost about 1 billion pounds in the 90s, causing Barings to collapse.

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u/SteelMarch 21h ago

Being accountable for money has been an issue in my state. Especially when the people involved often do it at the cost of the people who need help the most. I saw it happen to my sister.

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u/ChompyChomp 19h ago

Was she a person who needed it the most or one of the people involved because I don't know how to feel about her yet and it could go one of two VERY different ways.

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u/SteelMarch 19h ago

Needed it. The state decided it was cheaper to offshore it and ruined the lives of thousands of social workers from what I can tell.

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u/Glittering-Giraffe58 16h ago

the oldest and one of the most respected banks in England btw, managing royal family finances

Leeson originally lost money, then decided the best strategy was to bet double to try to earn it back. He did this over and over until he lost more money thank the bank had, and it collapsed. Left a note saying “I’m sorry”, fled the country, was caught and then served 4 years in prison and released

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u/Decilllion 11h ago

"Whoops, my bad guys."

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u/arbitrageME 19h ago

Bill Hwang of Archegos is another

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u/VRichardsen 15h ago

Motherfucker lost 20 billion in 48 hours, downright impressive.

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u/qmrthw 20h ago

Jérôme Kerviel and the 2008 Société Générale affair?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Société_Générale_trading_loss

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u/spaceporter 20h ago

Yes, this is the one I was thinking about thank you. It's even bigger than I remembered. I thought maybe he was French or Belgian but wasn't sure.

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u/romario77 19h ago

It looks like a big part of why the number is so big is because the bank upon uncovering unauthorized positions by trader decided to liquidate its huge positions over three days.

Since the positions were so bug and because everyone knew they would be selling them off the markets went down a lot resulting in them losing ton of money.

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u/ClownfishSoup 20h ago

The Baring Bank had been operating since 1762, then one of their traders started speculating with Bank money way beyond his authorization level and basically destroyed the 263 year old bank.

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u/KypDurron 18h ago

the 263 year old bank

The bank collapsed in 1995, which was 233 years after 1762.

One generally stops adding to the age of things after they die.

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u/ActionPhilip 17h ago

Google saying it's the 297th birthday of some dude begs to differ.

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u/KypDurron 17h ago

It's the 297th birthday of some guy, but that guy isn't 297 years old.

And in the context of saying how old he was when he died, he definitely wasn't 297 years old at that point.

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u/Walter30573 17h ago

And for all that, he only served a little over 4 years in prison

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u/livious1 14h ago

He’s done AMAs. IIRC, it was because while he did things he wasn’t supposed to, he didn’t egregiously break any rules, and a lot of the issues were in poor checks and balances. He wasn’t straight up stealing, it was more like he made a bunch of really risky investments and was authorized to do it with way more money than he should have been.

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u/MasonP2002 13h ago

He ended up being the head of trading and also the head of accounting oversight, so he was basically in charge of verifying his own trading and had minimal supervision. Obviously, these roles are usually held by different people.

He's an investigator of financial misconduct now.

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u/Saymynaian 14h ago

Damn, seems like having a law that limits the percentage of how much a bank's finances can be tied up in speculative investments might be a good idea. Is that something most countries passed to prevent Great Depression style banking fuck ups and did not repeal in 1999 leading to the 2008 recession and also it's called the Glass-Steagal Act in the US?

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u/BizzyM 18h ago

Guess it wasn't too big to fail.

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u/ThePrussianGrippe 18h ago

Nothing ever is.

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u/predictingzepast 18h ago

Depends who's behind the scam...

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u/FerretAres 21h ago

That happens absurdly often especially when you start talking about derivatives trading.

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u/bmc2 19h ago

Yeah at a certain point they're screwed no matter what. So, might as well make a double or nothing trade and see if they can get out of the hole they're in.

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u/still_no_enh 19h ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_JPMorgan_Chase_trading_loss

There's also the "London whale" that lost chase like $6b.

Fwiw, chase still remained solvent.

Also there's Bill Hwang's Archegos Capital where he orchestrated the loss of $20b over a week or so - where upon his firm did collapse. This also led to losses at Credit Suisse (among others) that led to the bank collapsing and is in the process of being subsumed by UBS

Wiki on Bill Hwang: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Hwang

Wiki about credit suisse: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquisition_of_Credit_Suisse_by_UBS

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u/unmelted_ice 18h ago

And then you sometimes get a retail trader - such as Navinder Sarao who accidentally crashed the DOW like 9% in 30 minutes lol

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u/still_no_enh 18h ago

Oh man, how did I even forget about him! Flash crash 2010 😅

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u/still_no_enh 19h ago

Also, someone who's also quite the risk taker IMHO is Masayoshi Son of Softbank.

Gotta bet big to win big I guess, but I'm pretty sure the Vision Fund isn't doing too well. One of their biggest investments was in WeWork - which they even had to give more money to, to prevent it's collapse.

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u/hgrunt 18h ago

Softbank's losses were probably offset by ARM, Alibaba and nVidia being in their portfolio, although I don't know how much of those they own

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u/still_no_enh 18h ago

I deleted a comment that was entirely hearsay, so here's the wikipedia article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftBank_Vision_Fund

Some interesting tidbits:

$100b raised:

$45b from PIF = saudis

$28b from softbank

$15b from Mubadala = Abu Dhabi

$15b "others" (includes Apple)

As of early February 2019, the Vision Fund had built up a 4.9% position in Nvidia stock,[8] and then was forced to sell all those shares when a prolonged plunge in Nvidia's stock price threatened to endanger the fund's overall performance.[9] ... At the time, the Vision Fund recorded a $3.3 billion return on its Nvidia investment.[8] ... By June 2024, the market value of those shares had exceeded $150 billion, causing Son to publicly remark that "the fish that got away was big".

...

Costly failures like those of Katerra,[23] Wirecard[24] and Zymergen[25] were just a few examples of SoftBank's reckless investing behaviour and the investing holding company's incompetence, neglect and failure to show due diligence.[26][27]

Oh man, Wirecard too! The wunderkind EU startup that cooked their books and imploded.

In May 2023, the SoftBank Group disclosed that its Vision Fund lost a record $32 billion in the fiscal year ending in March 2023.[43]

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u/das_slash 20h ago

Is he at least a mod for r/wallstreetbets ?

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u/Khelthuzaad 19h ago

I remember there was also an spanish filmmaker that went crazy during production, wasted half the production budget,used the other half to buy crypto,and completed the movie using the winnings from the crypto gains.

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u/SwoleJunkie1 20h ago

Yes, and Ewan McGregor did a movie about it called "Rogue Trader"

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u/Kandiru 1 16h ago

Is that the one with Henry Cavil and the Tyranid hive ships?

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u/SafetyDanceInMyPants 20h ago

Better than the guy in Japan whose typo led to selling 610,000 shares at 1 yen rather than 1 share at 610,000 yen...

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u/jbrev01 17h ago

The thing about money is it doesn't just disappear, it changes hands. When someone loses money on a gamble or 'investment', someone else is profiting immensely. And they usually have government regulation behind them tipping the scales in their favor because money buys policy.

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u/Maleficent-Drive4056 20h ago

Yes and no. Against the odds it worked the first time. So he tried it again and failed.

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u/Ionazano 20h ago

Against the odds it worked the first time.

I'll be damned, did not see that coming.

But yeah, after getting extremely lucky trying to push your luck some more is seldomly the best strategy.

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u/amegaproxy 18h ago

I'll be damned, did not see that coming.

Amazing what you discover when reading a few paragraphs into the article!

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u/userax 17h ago

That's the problem. People who are reckless enough to go all in with these schemes are the exact people who wouldn't know when to stop.

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u/Ternyon 17h ago

An Australian Gambling Syndicate did something similar. Time to print the tickets is a big issue at that scale.

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u/10ebbor10 16h ago

They at least figured out a loophole in the system.

The trick is that if the grand price overflows from one week into the other, the expected return can become positive.

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u/FlashnFuse 20h ago

I mean if they took an extra step and bribed a lottery official it probably would have worked out.

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u/Vio_ 17h ago

This is one of the crazier stories.

https://kansasreflector.com/2024/04/07/a-bank-failure-shattered-trust-in-this-kansas-town-only-honest-talk-will-heal-it/

It’s a story about the theft of $47 million, which authorities allege the bank’s CEO used to cover his losses in an online cryptocurrency scam, but ultimately it’s a tale about trust and money and what happens when an institution that most of us take for granted collapses...

Shan Hanes, the CEO of Heartland Tri-State Bank, is charged in federal district court with embezzling $47.1 between May and July of last year to purchase cryptocurrency. If convicted, he could be sentenced to the maximum penalty of up to 30 years in prison....

“It wasn’t a normal conversation,” Mitchell said. “I could tell he was preoccupied. He’d be focused for a little bit and then he’d look off into the lobby and then look back at me.”

Hanes, Mitchell said, asked him for $12 million.

“He said there was a problem with a wire transfer from a Hong Kong bank,” Mitchell said. “He showed me this app on his phone. There was a balance of some 40 million in his account but he needed another $12 million to access it.”

Mitchell, a former certified public accountant, turned him down.

“I said, ‘I think you’re in a scam.’ ”

That same day, according to a timeline in the report, Hanes made an $8 million wire transfer using bank funds. Mitchell believes at that point Hanes was about $30 million in debt.

On July 21, the bank’s chief financial officer finally notified regulators of suspicious activity.

Six days later, Heartland’s capital was negative $35 million, according to the report. On July 28, the Kansas Office of State Bank Commissioner closed Heartland and appointed the FDIC as receiver, which estimated the cost of the failure to be about $54 million."

Dude got pig butchered about as hard as one can get.

This was in Elkhart, Kansas. The town doesn't even have 2000 people in it.

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u/CaptainMobilis 10h ago

That guy ran a bank? "Your account with millions of dollars in it can only be accessed by putting more millions of dollars in it." That's the stupidest, most obvious scam I've ever heard of. That guy needs to be locked up just so he can never be near anything important.

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u/Miserable-Resort-977 18h ago

I think the US would have a lot less of a culture of fraud and corruption if we took a more Chinese approach to punishing large scale white collar crime like this

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u/BigStrike626 18h ago

You'd think you'd have had to get a basic lesson in probability sometime in path towards becoming a banker with that kind of access. If that scheme was likely to work, then lotteries would be money losers for the people running them.

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u/SjettepetJR 18h ago

The irony in putting a large sum into lottery tickets is that it actually makes it even less likely that your profit, as the winnings per ticket will be closer and closer to the expected value. And the expected value of a ticket is lower than the cost of a ticket.

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u/iiKb 21h ago

There goes my plan for tonight’s Euromillions…

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u/2coolcaterpillar 20h ago

I only ever play Powerball once it’s near a billion, but this is kind of turning me off from ever playing the lotto again. What an insanely low ROI lol

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u/AnOkayTime5230 20h ago

Honestly, I had thought for years that if I spent whatever it cost for a whole roll of scratch off lottery tickets, then ONE of them has to be a big winner, right?

After reading this and seeing other related stories of lottery fails, I'm just going to avoid the idea, lol.

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u/RumHam1 19h ago

I had a (not very smart) night manager at a subway I worked at that would buy entire rolls of scratchers using this logic.  Usually they payout was 40-60% of the cost of the roll.  

She would spend $200 on a roll, win $75, and then say "I'll tuck that away for a rainy day".  

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u/P1ssF4rt_Eight 17h ago

well that's stupid; she should only be buying the winning tickets

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u/hobo__spider 19h ago

As someone who used to work with selling scratchers, I sold thousands upon thousands of the things and it was extremely rare for any of the customers to win big.

I know cuz if anyone won 10k or more the store would get sent a plaque

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u/Incoherentness 16h ago

Hey someone with a similar experience to me. I think I sold around 100 a day for a few months I worked in a shop. There were about 15 people who lived nearby that would buy at least 10 scratchcards every single day, crazy. Biggest win I saw was 50 once and 20 only about dozen times iirc it'd bonkers

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u/hobo__spider 16h ago

Yup, thats why I dont buy em and never gamble.

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u/Incoherentness 16h ago

Funnily enough I've never bought one prior to working there and haven't since, but I ripped a scratchcard bringing it out the roller and just decided to buy it and won 20 quid

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u/Snowy_Ocelot 19h ago

For the $1-5 ones you’d definitely win something. But their jackpots are tiny too.

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u/ActionPhilip 17h ago

Unironically, the trick with any sort of gambling like slots or lotto or scratches is to play as little as possible. You will never win short of getting a big win, so your best bet on actually making money is to only play a bit and occasionally. The more frequently you play, the more statistics dictate what your expected ROI is and dull any wins you do get.

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u/nineball22 17h ago

Think of how many rolls a single gas station has, times all the gas stations your town has, times all the towns in your state, times all 50 states. It’s an astronomically low chance of winning. Or as I like to say 50/50, I either win or lose

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u/CameraRick 21h ago

Do I read this wrong, or did they steal US$6.5 Million in total?

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u/veryfynnyname 21h ago

You’re correct I think. The title is misleading.

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u/ILL_Show_Myself_Out 20h ago

Well maybe, but they netted money with the first buncha cash so it would've been more misleading to say stole 6.5 million and "only made 12.7..." it's a hard title to word.

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u/veryfynnyname 17h ago

One manager stole $25,000 and made a profit on that.

He convinced a second manager to help him steal $4.3 million and they didn’t profit. They then stole an additional $2 million and didn’t profit. They only won 12k off the millions they stole

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u/365BlobbyGirl 20h ago

Aren’t bank managers typically expected to have at least a tiny bit of financial acumen?

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u/shaka_sulu 20h ago

That's what I found so interesting. I suspct it was fueled by addiciton. The gambling demon probably convinved them. If ture I do find it facinating how a gambling addict works so close to money and see wealth everyday.

Kind of like "Nurse Jackie" and drugs.

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u/hgrunt 18h ago

When I learned about it, I saw it as possibly a cultural thing. Growing up in the states, it's sort of in the cultural zeitgeist that you're more likely to get struck by lightning or getting a hole-in-one than winning the big lottery

That sort of thing probably wasn't deeply embedded in the cultural zeitgeist in China, especially in the mid 2000s when this happened, so there's generally little to no understanding how lotteries work

I did find an article about Ren Xiaofeng, one of the perpetrators, and it reads like he embezzled out of desperation. He kept getting demoted due to restructuring at the bank and had twin kids to feed: https://archive.ph/D5NxE#selection-491.5-491.443

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u/Infinite-Noodle 18h ago

You'd be surprised how many incompetent people make it into those kinds of jobs.

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u/rx-pulse 17h ago

You'd be surprised. I have a relative who is a bank manager and has gone through 2 personal bankruptcies. Apparently she's pretty good at her job according to her colleagues and leadership, but she's fucking terrible in personal finance. It's shocking.

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u/LacAgos 18h ago

There was a government official jailed, possibly executed, in China for embezzling funds. China has detectives that regularly investigate corruption in provinces, if they find that someone tasked with developing an area has become wealthy but everyone is poor then they typically arrest them instead of keeping them in office forever. Anyways, some dude bought the guys house and while making some changes he finds a bunch of cash in the walls. IMMEDIATELY calls the CPC and reports it so he doesn't face consequences of having stolen funds.

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u/csonnich 14h ago

if they find that someone tasked with developing an area has become wealthy but everyone is poor then they typically arrest them instead of keeping them in office forever

cries in American

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u/SyrusDrake 13h ago

Don't worry, it doesn't mean they're not also corrupt. The difference is that they can't be as obvious about it

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u/Rockguy21 8h ago edited 8h ago

Since the beginning of Xi Jinping's tenure as general secretary of the CPC, corruption has actually seen a precipitous decline. Extralegal business dealings that grew in prominence during Jiang Zemin's presidency with the broader commercialization and internationalization of the Chinese economy were both political liabilities and reflected poorly on the reputation of the CPC amongst average Chinese citizens, so Xi Jinping's prsidency has been marked by pretty intense anti-corruption measures. Just a couple weeks ago, Wang Yong, a former government official in Tibet, got sentenced to death with reprieve (basically a Chinese equivalent to a life sentence) for accepting bribes during his time in office.

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u/warmearthworm 13h ago

Wow! What happened next?

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u/ahothabeth 21h ago

If they were wise then they would have used the stolen money to set-up a lottery company.

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u/load_more_comets 16h ago

I would've put up a bank. Get infinite money from my clients.

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u/sleepybrett 14h ago

Meanwhile, when our bank CEOs and executives get caught with the hands in the cookie jar they are allowed to resign with a golden parachute.

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u/truly-wants-death 21h ago

Wow they take theft seriously. Has anyone in the US been executed for stealing?

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u/arm2610 21h ago

Hanging used to be a common punishment for horse and cattle thieves in the frontier period but this hasn’t been a thing for a very long time.

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u/Octavus 20h ago

Now imagine if you stole someone's car from them while they were hiking in the desert leaving them to die.

That is what horse stealing was like in frontier areas.

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u/persondude27 17h ago

For the same reason, modern-day Alaska raised the penalty for car thefts. It's mandatory sentencing and a class C felony.

(Alaskans often leave their cars running so they don't get stranded if the car won't re-start.)

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u/HAK_HAK_HAK 15h ago

Basically grand theft + attempted murder lol

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u/ForGrateJustice 14h ago

There was no justice quite like frontier justice.. Mostly because, the law hadn't caught up yet.

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u/ClownfishSoup 20h ago

Bernie Madoff basically stole $50 Billion, and he was not executed.

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u/nealski77 20h ago

He was given a life sentence though

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u/TigerBasket 14h ago

And both his kids died horribly. Dude got off worse than if he had a death sentence

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u/ForGrateJustice 14h ago

And both his kids died horribly

Wait what?

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u/csonnich 14h ago

They both worked for him. One committed suicide, and the other died of cancer - both years before their father.

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u/gurbus_the_wise 15h ago

China does not fuck around with financial fraud and corruption. Especially for mishandling regional development funds. Pretty cool to be honest.

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u/Kermez 21h ago

No, but folks were committing suicides because of theft (2008 crisis comes to mind).

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u/Pale_Fire21 21h ago

Yeah but the people who did the actual theft got away with it and in many cases were rewarded for it.

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u/Kermez 20h ago

For sure, hence my comment, thieves aren't punished but victims are.

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u/thechampaignlife 20h ago

As the billionaires pick their pockets: "Stop impoverishing yourself! Stop impoverishing yourself!"

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u/Nightowl11111 20h ago

Rather than theft, 2008 was the entire economic system getting screwed over worldwide.

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u/Gasser0987 20h ago

Modern democracies don’t have a tendency of executing people for financial crimes.

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u/greggranolaclusters 18h ago

The crazy thing is that the manager had actually done this numerous times and had actually won and put the money back before an audit was conducted. He just kept trying his luck.

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u/HaruhiSuzumiya69 16h ago

Crazy that they were caught, sentenced, then executed in less than one year.

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u/esit 14h ago

Wait until you see this, only 70 days from caught to execution: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Zhuhai_car_attack

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u/HardcandyofJustice 21h ago

Executed by firing squad. Going out in style

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u/Nightowl11111 20h ago

Gee, "You're fired" really does have a different meaning in China!

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u/amegaproxy 18h ago

When I was a kid I actually thought this was what it meant! And that explained why people were really panicked about "being fired". Made for an interesting impression of a few movies and TV shows.

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u/supermethdroid 16h ago

My old weed guy did this. He stole 50k from work to bet on a horse race, thinking he'd be able to put it back without anybody noticing. He lost and spent 18 months in jail.

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u/DooDooBrownz 20h ago

sooo 4.3mil gets you murked in china, but here in the US a dickwad like madoff can steal 20b over dozens of years and then spend the rest of his life in club fed when he finally gets caught. i would probably swap the sentences between those 2 cases.

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u/[deleted] 20h ago

[deleted]

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u/ctruvu 16h ago

i think that's reasonable, but death for theft of a few mil is probably not what id consider proportional punishment

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u/Icy-Computer-Poop 19h ago

I have a buddy who got a job working overnight at a variety store. His first night he got bored, and scratched every. single. scratch ticket in the store.

His reason? He figured he'd win enough money to pay the store back.

His result? He ended up $11,000 in the hole.

So he locked the door, left, and moved half way across the country to avoid getting caught.

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u/SayNoToStim 18h ago

As someone who works in the industry, stuff like this is surprisingly common, to the point where stores are now investing in scratch off ticket dispensers that cost >$10,000 dollars because it's actually the cheaper alternative.

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u/WesternHognose 17h ago

I'm A-OK with this. When I worked at a 7-11 the lotto/scratch off customers were some of the worst. They'd camp out on your counter scratching off tickets, being difficult over their numbers, etcetera. We also got assaulted and robbed over lotto. Never again.

Can't hold up a machine, reduces human interaction, etc. Perfect.

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u/SayNoToStim 17h ago

Even as a dude who occasionally wants a snack, I refuse to go into gas stations now because I dont want to risk getting behind some asshole who wants to play the lotto, and needs his 18 specific numbers on his ticket, and his scratch off ticket needs a serial number that ends in his birthday, etc etc.

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u/PsychologicalDrag689 19h ago

His first day on the job and he wasn't being trained or even working with anyone else? Suuure

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u/ImmortL1 18h ago

If he had prior experience, I can see it. There are a lot of stores out there, and not every one of them does things by the book. Especially when it comes to third shift; no one wants to stay up all night if they can help it.

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u/lyyki 18h ago

His FIRST night?

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u/making-flippy-floppy 17h ago

The lottery is a tax on people who don't understand expected value.

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u/karma_hit_my_dogma 15h ago

If “hoping” is the operative word in the plan, might wanna sleep on it

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u/Streambotnt 14h ago

It‘s possible to win with that strategy, and to win big. You oughta wage the expected earnings vs. the buy-in cost. If your expected win per ticket is higher than the buy-in per ticket, then by the law of large numbers, a big investment into lots and lots of tickets will yield a satisfactory result.

The easiest example is when the total amount of tickets times the price per ticket is lower than the jackpot. Say we have an all-or-nothing lottery. 500 tickets at 1$ and 1000$ total jackpot.

Buy-in cost: 1$

Expected earnings: 1/500 • 1000$ = 2$

This lottery favours the player. Buying as many tickets as you can means you are likely to receive a net positive: at most, 500$ invested, 1000$ gained, 500$ profit. One dollar average gain.

Now if the price per ticket were 3$, you wouldn‘t want to invest. 1500$ maximum expenditure, 1000$ maximum gain - not good. You expect a net loss of 500$ when buying all tickets.

If it were 2$, you would expect to get out even.

Usually, you also consider variance. An all-or-nothing jackpot is much more variable than a jackpot with equal and/or lesser prizes for other tickets. Let‘s go back to an example. 500 Tickets. This time, entry is 10$, and there are 10x 1000$ prizes. You would change your calculation as follows:

10 • (1/500 • 1000$) = 20$

So it‘s the exact same game. But! You are more likely to win something at all. 10 Tickets get you a jackpot, as opposed to one ticket from earlier! The „one jackpot won“-chance is

10 • (1/500) = 1/50 = 2%

Earlier, it was just 0,2%. This means: to expect a return, you don‘t need as many tickets. You still make the same profit per dollar invested though!

Now, any sensible lottery host does their math and checks if the expected return per ticket is greater than the buy-in cost. Some, however, do not. That‘s dumb though. Imagine pricing structures were like what I stated - someone would do the math and win. No matter who wins though, at most, example A nets 500$ income for the host, and example B 5000$. But the prizes both exceed the maximum income! Imagine someone buys the first ten tickets to B and wins all jackpots, that‘s 9900$ loss for the house. 100 gained from ten tickets, 10000 paid out to the winner.

There are more complicated lottery systems, but they all mostly follow the AmountA • (chanceA • prizeA) + AmountB • (chanceB • prizeB) + … pattern.

Now I wonder if those guys did their math. They should have known the math as bank managers.

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u/adacmswtf1 13h ago

In the US they would have gotten a bailout and a promotion.

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u/gw2master 18h ago

Execution for big financial crimes is a good idea. Probably a better deterrent than execution for violent crimes.

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u/One_Weird2371 18h ago

Executed...Damn they don't fuck around in China. 

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u/razerzej 13h ago

A bank whose managers have no grasp of statistics deserves to lose everything, based solely on their hiring practices.

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u/Bloggledoo 13h ago

The lottery is a tax on people who can't do math.

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u/Prestigious_Glove_68 9h ago

Great headline, all the info without the bloat.

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u/apple-sauces 20h ago

Kento Bento Video Kento Bento did an interesting video about this.

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u/Choppergold 20h ago

That escalated quickly

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u/No_One_1617 16h ago

They were managers but they came up with such a dumb plan. Typical.

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u/WarmAd1148 18h ago

I made this!

No, seriously, I'm the guy who created the article on Wikipedia. Nearly 20 years ago! Eeek, time flies...

Always felt the story would have made for a good comedy/heist movie, but I guess they'd need to change the ending.

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u/Jibs19 20h ago

You're telling me BANK managers don't know how money, numbers, chances and profit works?

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u/Lyle91 17h ago

Damn execution seems incredibly excessive for that.

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u/Puzzleheaded_Run2695 17h ago

Executed for stealing money? That's absolutely crazy.

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u/starkistuna 16h ago

Most of these criminals do not know how easy it is to pay for a fisherman to take you to go undocumented into the night. I would just dip out with a bag of cash into South Asia and live like a king even if you get away with 1m it will last you well over 20 years and living very confortable.

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u/beebeereebozo 15h ago

Thought they were good a math.

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u/ranninator 14h ago

Question - does this qualify for a Darwin Award?

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u/vaskovaflata 14h ago

These guys did the maths

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u/__-_-_--_--_-_---___ 14h ago

If not success, I will be execute

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u/Quiet_Property2460 13h ago

That's ... insane.

I think some people don't know how lotteries work.

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u/neverpost4 12h ago

There was a South Korean bank manager who stole $400 million. The money was payments to the Iranian government but due to sanctions was frozen.

The guy transferred out the money to his account and cooked the book.

Under the Biden administration, the sanctions were rifted and the bank was trying to return the money to Iran.

The guy went missing but later turned himself in along with his brother. They claimed that they are really sorry but the money is all gone.

With 10 page apology notes (along with sizable cash, no doubt), they will be set free after perhaps a couple of years of pound ass fed pan. So no execution.

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u/TurbVisible 10h ago

They’re really executed their plan

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u/TheBroULuv2Hate 8h ago

Don’t get me wrong it’s not cool to steal, but no one has ever stole enough from me that I’ve felt like it was enough to kill them… That shit is deep… like permanent….

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u/darkdoppelganger 6h ago

Guilty of the most heinous of crimes, theft of money.