One June morning in 2017, an Albanian American real-estate broker named Viktor Gjonaj parked outside a strip mall in Sterling Heights, a small suburb on the outskirts of Detroit. He hurried past a halal-meat shop, through a waft of spices from an Indian grocery store, and into the claim office of the Michigan Lottery. Gjonaj, who is 6 foot 5, loomed over the front desk in his designer Italian shoes, his dark hair slicked back and glistening in the fluorescent light, and announced that he had won the Daily 4 lottery draw. Twice a day since 1981, the Michigan Lottery has drawn four numbered Ping-Pong balls from a plastic tank and paid up to $5,000 to any player with the same four digits on their pink ticket. But Gjonaj did not have one winning ticket. He had 500.
Skeptical lottery officials ushered him into a back office and checked his tickets carefully. Each was genuine and contained the four winning numbers—7-8-0-0—drawn on June 18. The odds of winning were just one in 416—not terribly long by lottery standards—but it was extremely unusual for someone to play the same numbers 500 times in one day. There were other red flags. Most people who present themselves at lottery claim centers are ecstatic, yet this winner waited for his prizes with the impatience of someone picking up dry cleaning. It took staff six hours to cut 500 checks for $5,000 each. Then Gjonaj (his name is pronounced Joe-nye) tucked them inside the pocket of his sports jacket and roared away in his…
