Is it legal for someone to just start a lotto-like thing where people buy tickets at $5 a peice, and one person is drawn as the winner and wins 60% of total sales? If it is legal, that would be great 'cause I could make a little money off of people in my town.
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Is this legal
- Thread starter MewSkitty
- Start date
I would say this SHOULD be entirely legal. However, there are gambling laws and whatnot. Also, there isn't really a way to tell if this lottery is rigged. But, the gov. isn't here to protect you from abolishing your own rights, but from others doing so. If it can harm the person, and only the person(or others)VOLUNATRILY participating, then so be it. It is there choice to risk hurting themselves. Now, if you were forcing people, say at gunpoint or by threat, then it would be illegal.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
This is not legal in any state in the U.S. (Including Nevada.) Gambling of any kind is only legal if it's run by the state (lotteries), businesses with good connections who pay lots of taxes (casinos) or, in very special cases, churches (bingo and door prizes).
That's not to say that every unlawful gambling event is raided by the authorities and its participants prosecuted. There's too much of it for them to get it all. But if you want to have a prayer of being winked at and allowed to have your little game, you'd better give out a whole lot more than 60 percent of the take to the winners. Keeping 40 percent is, in all likelihood, more greedy than even the games run by gangsters. Casinos get by on just a couple of percent and even churches are more generous than you are.
Take your cues from the stuff you see people getting away with. The office football pool: 100 percent of the money taken in goes to the winners. The Friday night poker game: Even most of them are zero-sum games, but if the house takes anything it's just a pittance to pay for the refreshments so the host breaks even. You can't make a profit off of private, off-the-books gambling and get away with it.
You also need to keep the stakes low. The cops aren't going to bother busting a football pool with a $250 prize or a poker game in which the big winner goes home $100 richer. You get up into the quadruple digits, you're asking to get busted.
I am not in any way endorsing your idea, I'm just giving you the facts as I know them. What you're thinking of is pretty much what gangsters call "the numbers racket." As illegal gambling goes, this version is very much frowned upon. You almost certainly will not get away with it.
That's not to say that every unlawful gambling event is raided by the authorities and its participants prosecuted. There's too much of it for them to get it all. But if you want to have a prayer of being winked at and allowed to have your little game, you'd better give out a whole lot more than 60 percent of the take to the winners. Keeping 40 percent is, in all likelihood, more greedy than even the games run by gangsters. Casinos get by on just a couple of percent and even churches are more generous than you are.
Take your cues from the stuff you see people getting away with. The office football pool: 100 percent of the money taken in goes to the winners. The Friday night poker game: Even most of them are zero-sum games, but if the house takes anything it's just a pittance to pay for the refreshments so the host breaks even. You can't make a profit off of private, off-the-books gambling and get away with it.
You also need to keep the stakes low. The cops aren't going to bother busting a football pool with a $250 prize or a poker game in which the big winner goes home $100 richer. You get up into the quadruple digits, you're asking to get busted.
I am not in any way endorsing your idea, I'm just giving you the facts as I know them. What you're thinking of is pretty much what gangsters call "the numbers racket." As illegal gambling goes, this version is very much frowned upon. You almost certainly will not get away with it.
depends on where you live and how you advertise your event.
take a raffle for example. people use them as fundraisers all the time and are obviously legal. (and used for profit) the difficulty is in making it legal. you have to be licensed (not sure of all the details, you'd have to look into it) in order to hold something where others win by chance. which means money up front for you. licensing is to make sure nothing is rigged, and your little lotto is ligit. but i wouldn't call it a lotto. make it something that sounds community friendly and you'd be set.
take a raffle for example. people use them as fundraisers all the time and are obviously legal. (and used for profit) the difficulty is in making it legal. you have to be licensed (not sure of all the details, you'd have to look into it) in order to hold something where others win by chance. which means money up front for you. licensing is to make sure nothing is rigged, and your little lotto is ligit. but i wouldn't call it a lotto. make it something that sounds community friendly and you'd be set.