Report: Lottery Officials Knew Game's Quirks

A report by the state inspector general says Lottery officials knew for years that a small group of sophisticated gamblers was reaping high payoffs by manipulating one particular game but did nothing about it until a report by The Boston Globe.

The probe into the defunct Cash Winfall game by Inspector General Gregory Sullivan details how a handful of players, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology undergraduates, turned the game into a business, spending $40 million on tickets over a seven-year period and winning an estimated $48 million.

Lottery officials not only knew about it, but were happy with the increased sales, even bending rules to allow gamblers to buy hundreds of thousands of tickets at a time.

Treasurer Steven Grossman on Monday apologized. He discontinued Cash Winfall this year.