Hue Jackson’s Hall of Fame Scammers: Jerry and Marge Selbee

Welcome back to another exclusive sneak preview of the Hue Jackson School of Scam Artistry!

I’ve been reading a lot about these vaccine lotteries lately. Seems like a cool way of getting reluctant folks to do something for the common good… but it does make one wonder whether or not people are out there getting like eight or nine needles to see if they can improve their odds at winning a jackpot. I don’t know if it’s medically sound or not, but if there are people out there attempting it, then to me, they have a scammer’s heart – and my respect. This week, we’re going to look at a couple that managed to pull off an incredibly clever con – without harming themselves or others along the way!

JERRY AND MARGE SELBEE: MASTERS OF THE LOTTERY

BORN: 1938 & 1939, Michigan

As the American economy continues to lurch back and forth between being completely decimated and roaring ahead like a V8 engine, a few things have remained constant. A plurality of workers remain underpaid and are forced to go without health care and retirement benefits. No wonder, then, that the lottery presents the most viable retirement options for millions of people across the country – despite the staggeringly small odds of success. As such, when you learn how to win the lottery – and I mean actively win – you have the world at your fingertips. As crazy as that may sound, our Hall of Fame Scammers this week literally learned how to do just that.

Jerry and Marge Selbee are a small-town Michigan couple, now in their 80s. They ran a small convenience store in Evart for 17 years, before selling it and retiring in their early 60s to enjoy life. They had no particular plans, and all the freedom in the world. With so much free time at their disposal, the stage was set for Jerry, who has a bachelor’s degree in math from Western Michigan University, to make a remarkable discovery in 2003.

Having recently retired, Jerry walked into his former store when he noticed a brochure for a new lottery game the state of Michigan was running, called “Winfall”. Like many other lottery games, players pick six numbers in hopes of winning a large jackpot, which is quite rare. However, unlike other lottery games, Winfall also featured something called a “rolldown”: if nobody matched with all six numbers, the pot of money would then be split amongst players who had matched with five, then four, then three numbers.

As Jerry said in an interview with 60 Minutes back in early 2019, “Here’s what I said. I said if I played $1,100 mathematically I’d have one 4-number winner, that’s 1,000 bucks. I divided 1,100 by six instead of 57 because I did a mental quick dirty and I come up with 18. So I knew I’d have either 18 or 19 3-number winners and that’s 50 bucks each. At 18 I got $1,000 for a 4-number winner, and I got 18 3-number winners worth $50 each, so that’s 900 bucks. So I got $1,100 invested and I’ve got a $1,900 return.”

Jerry’s math skills immediately paid dividends; he put down $3600 in Winfall tickets when a rolldown was announced, and won $6300. The second time, he put down $8000 and got back almost $16 grand.

Eventually, Marge found out. Not surprised at her husband’s math skills, she was quickly on board. The Selbees founded a company, G.S. Investment Strategies, and sold shares of the corporation for $500 a pop to family and friends in their small town. They began putting down hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of tickets; at one point, they put down $515,000 and got back $853,000 – almost a 60% return on investment. It’s extremely important to note here – everything taking place was, in fact, perfectly legal. No laws were broken at any point in this gigantic operation – making their success all the more remarkable.

In two years, the small group of about 25 people won millions of dollars by playing Winfall; however, in the spring of 2005, the state of Michigan unexpectedly shut the game down – citing “lack of sales” as the culprit. Shortly after, however, an investor tipped off the Selbees that Massachusetts had just running their own version of Michigan’s game, called “Cash Winfall.” For the next six years, the Selbees kept the operation alive, though it took an incredible amount of effort; roughly six times a year, when a rolldown was announced, the Selbees would make the fourteen-hour drive across the country to Massachusetts, renting a motel room and sorting tickets for up to 10 hours a day for over a week at a time. That said, it was incredibly worth it; the Selbees, and their investors, were making over $600,000 each trip; over four million dollars a year in all.

Unbeknownst to the Selbees, a second group – a bunch of MIT math students – had also realized the secret to the game, and found similar success at Cash Winfall, making somewhere between $17-18 million over a seven-year period. When the Boston Globe got wind of this story, journalists noticed a pattern of ticket sales skyrocketing in rural Massachusetts towns whenever a rolldown was announced… leading them to discover the operation that Jerry and Marge were running. The resulting story about Cash Winfall, published in 2011, prompted the Massachusetts state government to shut down the game and launch a formal investigation, led by inspector-general Greg Sullivan. As it turns out, high-volume betting did nothing to affect anybody else’s chances at winning the game, and thus the tactics used by the Selbees and by the MIT students were perfectly legit. To boot, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts made over $120 million due to the game… so in the end, everybody came out winning.

In nine years of playing the lottery in Michigan and Massachusetts, the Selbees’ company made over $26 million; with their $8 million pre-tax profit, they paid for renovations to their house and paid for education for their six kids, fourteen grandkids, and ten great-grandkids. And they didn’t break a single law in the process. Talk about a successful scam – it’s always the sweetest when you don’t even have to do anything illegal for your success!

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Isn’t that just a feel-good story? I feel so warm and cozy inside. Actually, that may be the magic elixir I’ve been trying to sell. Speaking of which, if you call 1-900-FAST-BUX now, you can get a free bottle of KureAll and a lottery ticket* thrown in with your monthly subscription of audio cassette lessons! Don’t wait… this exclusive deal won’t be here for long – you don’t want to miss out! Until next time – I’m Hue Jackson.

*It’s a losing ticket from a 2009 Cash Winfall draw, which is a piece of history, folks!

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Information from this article taken from here and here. Banner image by The Maestro.