He Stole So Much Money // The Nick Perry Lottery Scandal
4/28/20268 min
The Nick Perry lottery scandal, famously known as the "Triple Six Fix," was a 1980 scheme to rig the Pennsylvania Lottery’s "Daily Number". Orchestrated by beloved local TV host Nick Perry, the plan involved injecting white latex paint into all but the number 4 and 6 ping-pong balls used in the drawing, making the weighted balls too heavy to be sucked into the machine’s chute.
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsRay William Johnson· Host0:00
You know that bingo scam in Better Call Saul where he tampers with the balls? Well, that is actually based on a lottery scam that happened in real life. Now, this story all starts with this guy. His name's Nick. And Nick is about 61 when all this begins, and he's living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And Nick is locally famous in the Pittsburgh area because he's been working as a host in TV and radio for years, and he's always on camera or on air. Everyone's heard of Nick. And one day in 1977, he's working at a TV station in Pittsburgh when the State of Pennsylvania launches its daily lottery, and the TV station he works for wins the broadcasting rights to the daily drawing, where they pick the numbers. So the station managers decide Nick is the perfect guy to host the show. So then every night, Nick comes on TV in front of these three machines that have numbered ping pong balls bouncing around in them, and when the winning balls are chosen, Nick reads them aloud, and then some random citizen wins a bunch of money. And this is a great gig for him. Like, it's easy, and he gets paid to be on TV. And about three years go by, and it's now 1980, and Nick is still working his daily drawing gig. But at this point, he started looking at this lottery business going, "I feel like I, I should get some of these winnings, too." So Nick starts really studying the whole system of the lottery and the security measures surrounding it, and eventually, he starts