Fbi Studying How Gamblers Got So Smart

It almost sounds too good to be true, the way Spokane’s Todd Horner tells it:

He and a few other ingenious gamblers found a numerical pattern in the Coeur d’Alene Tribal Casino’s on-line lottery and used it to win more than $45,000.

Officials of America’s first cyber lottery suspect Horner’s tale is too good to be true.

The FBI is investigating whether one of the lottery’s computer engineers tipped off one of the gamblers about the existence of a pattern.

Half the money was paid to alleged lucky winners. But $20,000-plus to Spokane’s Sandra Padrta has been frozen. It is the first time winnings have been withheld since the lottery burst onto the Internet a year ago.

“We have the funds in escrow,” assures Mike Yacenda, president of Connecticut-based UniStar Entertainment, developers of the cyber lottery. “If everything is above board we will release these funds.”

Much like Keno, the computer lottery game in dispute is played by wagering which numbers will be drawn from a larger field of numbers. The game is one of several offered on-line by the tribe.

Neither the FBI nor the casino were very forthcoming regarding details of this murky story. Gaming officials fear they will be perceived as welshers, which can be the kiss of death to any gambling establishment.

In this case the tribal casino acted properly. There is a distinct fishy odor hanging over this.

I learned about this through Horner, who called me the other day. Midway through our first interview, it became apparent this self-described “professional gambler” had an angle.

He wanted me to hold off writing a column so he could use the portent of bad publicity to lever the casino into paying up. He even offered me a cut of the action.

I told him no bet. Horner recalculated his odds and decided to keep talking.

“Basically, all we did is bring to light a major flaw in their system,” says Horner, 42. “If anything, we saved them millions of dollars.”

Being nicked for big money, the casino temporarily shut the lottery game down in late December.

It began looking at what role Steve Sokol, chief engineer for the Worley, Idaho-based casino’s U.S. Lottery, may have played in telling a friend about the game’s flaws.

“Anything I told anybody was public knowledge,” says Sokol, who contends the existence of a lottery pattern was common talk around the casino. “I’m really in over my head to be talking to you,” adds Sokol, who says he spoke with FBI agents last week.

Sokol’s friend, Laurie Strunk, won more than $10,000 playing the lottery. She says Sokol told her there were numerical patterns and that the game could be beaten. But “he didn’t point out any (specific) patterns.”

Strunk concedes, however, that without Sokol she probably wouldn’t have played the game.

These people aren’t strangers. Horner worked with Sokol years ago. Horner was rooming with Strunk last fall and played the lottery game on her account. That’s how he ended up with a $2,000 chunk of Strunk’s winnings.

Horner and Strunk are adamant that Sokol never profited from his knowledge, which is a major point being examined by the FBI.

According to Horner, two other unidentified gamblers used this method to beat the lottery and won $9,000 and $5,000 respectively.

In December, Horner began playing the game with Padrta (pronounced pat-er-day) on her dime. “I won my money fair and square,” she says. Padrta, who has no connections to Sokol or Strunk, claims she uncovered her own pattern through crafty analysis of numbers that were repeatedly popping up.

Another winning trick Horner says he used effectively was to go on-line, play the lucky numbers, sign off and repeat the process. Over and over again.

“We were freaking out,” says Horner of one 48-hour marathon winning streak. “It was 3 a.m. on a Wednesday. We were screaming. We couldn’t believe it.”

If whipping the lottery sounds like the easy road to an early retirement, take careful note: The casino fixed whatever software glitch caused this cyber lottery windfall.

“You better believe it,” Horner says. “I still think the game can be beat, but not the way it was.”

, DataTimes