NEW YORK – Seth Harris, a 26-year-old man had managed to create 78 Powerball tickets that collected a little over 400 million USD from the New York state lottery.
Harris who is currently on the run targeted tickets that did not collect their winnings either because the original ticket player had lost the ticket or maybe they are not aware of their winnings. He allowed at least four weeks for each ticket he photoshopped and printed in case the real winner eventually collect their winning.
75 of 78 tickets he made were collected by homeless people and single mothers. The equipment he used was found in his apartment. It is suspected that Harris stole some of the hardware from the time he worked as an intern for the New York lottery back in 2014 and 2015.
With his photoshop skills and a printer similar to the one used by a Powerball machine the only information he needed where details of the winning tickets that haven’t been collected yet. “We suspect there was a person giving him the information. An insider because even just one wrong number on the ticket can raise a red flag”.
“The fake tickets collected money between December 2015 and June 2019, the information was all in one hard drive he left behind when he abandoned his apartment. If he didn’t leave behind the info we’d have no clue how much his fake tickets collected”
What lead to Harris being exposed is just one ticket he faked in 2018 and the original winner went to collect the winnings 9 months later only to be told their winnings had been paid out already. “The homeless man who cashed the fake ticket must have warned Harris after we came for his 200k” – Daniel Osborne.
In 2015 Harris posted in a tweet in his now-deleted Twitter account saying he will make homeless people rich.