I love fortune cookies, they never offer any actual good advice, but the advice is awesome when you add “in bed” at the end of the cookies – yes it’s a little immature but that’s what they’re good for. They do have lottery numbers in the back, but really how many people actually play them?
According to Wikipedia, enough people to kill the winnings. On March 30, 2005 a fortune cookie company printed out the right numbers fot a Multi-State Lottery Association Lottery Drawing. The drawing produced 110 second prize winners. 89 of the winners received $100,000 each while the other 21 received $500,000 based on the power play ball selections.
At the time, the officials thought because of the large number of winners, fraud was involved. An investigation later revealed that the winners used the numbers they got from a Fortune cookie, the numbers “22,28,32,33,39,40” were printed out by Wonton Food and sent out to thousands of cookie eaters. The only number that didn’t match the combination was the #40, the Powerball number, which was #42, this is the reason 21 people received the $500,000 while the rest only received $100,000.
After the investigation, the lottery company paid off the people since the ticket holders won by coincidence rather than foul play.
Not bad, even though the chances of winning are 1 in 195+ million. I guess fortune cookies aren’t all that bad. What’s even more interesting is that the employees that printed out the cookies didn’t play the lottery. And I don’t blame them, they’ve been printing out cookies for decades every single day of the week… and finally they printed out a lucky one… depending on how you look at it since everyone and their mother won the price.
