Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime. It's a production of I Heart Radio. Oh hey,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Dotton, what are you doing here? I was hanging out.
Speaker 1: Do you happen to know anything that's ridiculous? Do you
Speaker 1: know what's ridiculous? I do? Would you let me know? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can let you know that there. We don't have
Speaker 1: a lot of novelty songs lately. That's ridiculous. We like
Speaker 1: in the eighties and then into the nineties, we'd have
Speaker 1: like top like top forty novelty hits, you know, like, um,
Speaker 1: what about like the Bahama Men, And like, uh, well
Speaker 1: it's not now how many it was like fifty years ago? Okay,
Speaker 1: I think that was the two thousands. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: get to your point. I'm trying to overestimate because I'll
Speaker 1: tell people it's ten years ago in the nineties and
Speaker 1: it wasn't so well, I'm I'm airing on the side
Speaker 1: of caution when I say fifty years So you're telling
Speaker 1: me that post Malone is not novelty songs. I'm kidding,
Speaker 1: Like no, but like you know, Disco Duck and that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. Duck, Yeah, all the Duck songs, all
Speaker 1: the two thousand's next like or just one hit wonder
Speaker 1: catchy kind of I don't know what we're talking, like
Speaker 1: the ninety nine balloons. Sure, no more novelty song actual
Speaker 1: novel yea, so like rock me on a des By Falco. Right,
Speaker 1: And here's the thing though, I don't listen to current
Speaker 1: popular music, so maybe there are a ton of them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, maybe you should be over there
Speaker 1: on TikTok checking out the novelty songs. Maybe you's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: You don't go on TikTok. There we go, so ridiculous. Well,
Speaker 1: I got a story for you. It is kind of ridiculous.
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear it in the mood always. Okay,
Speaker 1: how about a story of a man who was famous
Speaker 1: for hosting a TV game show called Bowling for Dollars
Speaker 1: and then the same man he went on to be,
Speaker 1: you know, be the guy, the mastermind if you will,
Speaker 1: to rig a state lottery. Yeah, it's called the Triple
Speaker 1: six Fix. And this is a story. It's about as
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania as it comes. Nice. This is Ridiculous Crime, a
Speaker 1: podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heist and cons. It's
Speaker 1: always murder free and ridiculous. Elizabeth What do you know
Speaker 1: about Pennsylvania? Nothing? Nothing, zero. You're in. You're in. Luck.
Speaker 1: I happen to have a few fun facts for you,
Speaker 1: isn't it. William penn is the founder, correct, and he
Speaker 1: likes the woods. That's Sylvania. Yes, we'll get into that.
Speaker 1: That's the extent of what you know. Okay, Well, Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: is the fifth most populous state, although the people there
Speaker 1: will tell you it's actually the fifth most populous commonwealth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's known these days as a decider presidential elections. It's
Speaker 1: also home to the Philadelphia Eagles and their battery tossing fans.
Speaker 1: And it's home to the Steelers, the Flyers, the Penguins,
Speaker 1: the Harrisburg Senators. Isn't gritty gritty? That's gritty Philadelphia Flyers.
Speaker 1: Oh and the Four Seasons Total Lands one of my
Speaker 1: all time favorite things ever. Very good. The Hersy Amusement
Speaker 1: Park and factory tour. You can see how chocolate gets made,
Speaker 1: now beyond sports chocolate. That kind of makes Europeans gag.
Speaker 1: We have what else we need to know about Pennsylvania crime. Well,
Speaker 1: you already got into the name part. His name for
Speaker 1: William penn Sylvania means Penn's Woods. Do you know the
Speaker 1: story of how it got that name. It wasn't him.
Speaker 1: He did not name it after himself. Someone else named it.
Speaker 1: Penns Woods, right, that's somebody else was King Charles, the
Speaker 1: second King Charls the second of it was the king
Speaker 1: of Scotland and the King of England after Oliver Cromwell died.
Speaker 1: It's a whole deal we want to get into that.
Speaker 1: The point is in one King Charles, he went over
Speaker 1: to William Penn's daddy and he's like, hey, man, I
Speaker 1: know I owe you a bunch of money to help
Speaker 1: me win back my kingdom. So I owe you some duckets.
Speaker 1: How about this, I'll give you some land in the
Speaker 1: America's And Pops is like, give it to my boy,
Speaker 1: all right. So he's like cool, gives it to his son.
Speaker 1: He's like, hey, William Penn, look send the money. I'm
Speaker 1: a little light on it. I'm gonna give you land
Speaker 1: in the America's And uh, how about that? And he's like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's very nice of you, your majesty, thank you very much.
Speaker 1: He's like, yeah, man, you'll love it. The place has
Speaker 1: got a ton of trees. I think we should advertise that.
Speaker 1: So let's call it William Penn's tree Land now William
Speaker 1: Penn's Woods. He's like, yeah, yeah, I like that. There
Speaker 1: it's done. Well. It's like no, no, no no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: don't name it after me. I'm a Quaker, so we
Speaker 1: can't have that. Let's name it New Whales. How about
Speaker 1: that New Whales's kind of got a whole new vibe
Speaker 1: to it, and you know, it's the America's everything's new there.
Speaker 1: And he's like, no, I don't like that. I already
Speaker 1: got my guys working on it. They're using a good vellum.
Speaker 1: So let's just go with williams Pen's Woods. And he's like, no,
Speaker 1: I bro, come on, your majesty. Could we just name
Speaker 1: it something other than that? How about okay, pensil Okay Sylvania,
Speaker 1: Like Elizabeth said, that's a good one. And he's like Kings, like, no,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I told you got the charter going.
Speaker 1: He's like, okay, I'll split it with you. Pensnsylvania my Sylvania,
Speaker 1: and he's like I love it, and eventually got shortened
Speaker 1: to Pennsylvania. Now. I spent a lot of time Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: as a kid. I like Pennsylvania a bunch, just like
Speaker 1: on your own yourself. I took my bindle hobo hopped
Speaker 1: onto like a train going east, and I didn't stop
Speaker 1: until we ran out of continent. And then I was like,
Speaker 1: back up a state, Take me to Pennsylvania. No, I
Speaker 1: have a cousin. I haven't. I have a whole family.
Speaker 1: But they have a whole family lives in a camp Hill, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: which is just near Harrisburg, which is the capital of Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: So I would be there hanging out around the same
Speaker 1: time that the star of today's story was just getting
Speaker 1: out of prison where he'd been spending his time for
Speaker 1: fixing the state lottery. And now I'd like to introduce
Speaker 1: you to the former host of Bowling for Dollars and
Speaker 1: the hero of our day, Nick Perry. Nick Perry, that's
Speaker 1: not his government name. Government name was Nicholas Perry Katson Faunas.
Speaker 1: He was Greek. Yeah, yeah, heeded. The dude was a
Speaker 1: World War Two veteran navy man, tough guy, you know,
Speaker 1: like actual, you know, Assault of the Earth gets back
Speaker 1: from the war and he's like, what am I gonna do?
Speaker 1: It's a new country. You know, I'm gonna get involved
Speaker 1: in this radio I think I got a good voice
Speaker 1: for radio, gets involved. Then there's a new medium that
Speaker 1: pops up called television. He's like, hey, I'm gonna bounce
Speaker 1: over to that. So he starts working at the television
Speaker 1: station from Pittsburgh, gets a job and he's hosting a
Speaker 1: live televised Polka party. Yeah. First television station of Pittsburgh's like,
Speaker 1: you know what, we need live polka? So this is about,
Speaker 1: you know, nineteen fifty Okay. In night he gets hired
Speaker 1: to become this new thing that's been invented called a
Speaker 1: TV announcer. He's like, yeah, I'm gonna be this guy
Speaker 1: I announced And they're like, okay, that's cool. What are
Speaker 1: you and that stuff on TV? Talking about it? So
Speaker 1: I guess his job at Pittsburgh station w T A E.
Speaker 1: Now w T A E. This is where he becomes
Speaker 1: what you might call Pittsburgh famous. This is where he
Speaker 1: gets his shows. The two most popular shows in Pittsburgh
Speaker 1: television at the time, Bowling for Dollars and Championship Bowling.
Speaker 1: He's a bowling guy. Oh big, Now can you guess
Speaker 1: what Bowling for Dollars was? Like? I think I think
Speaker 1: they may have had a version out here. I believe
Speaker 1: I remember when I was a little kid. One it's
Speaker 1: stayed a popular idea. Yeah in the so I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't I just remember the name of it. I
Speaker 1: don't remember the show itself. Imagine family feud with no
Speaker 1: questions and instead bowling balls. So they're just like your
Speaker 1: families competing a bowling man. So it's just like semi
Speaker 1: pro bowling. It's like amateurs. But then they also have,
Speaker 1: like you know, they have the whole fani le vibe,
Speaker 1: like come on, mom, pick up that seven tent split
Speaker 1: all right, exactly, and it's just visiting. Well, is it's corny.
Speaker 1: I'll admit it's totally corny, and it's a lot of
Speaker 1: fun to watch. We'll we'll put up a clip on
Speaker 1: Instagram so you can see what this looks like. It
Speaker 1: is worth it just for the fashion a loan because
Speaker 1: the clips were gonna put up. Or from the seventies,
Speaker 1: which is love It, Love It great oranges greens you
Speaker 1: haven't seen since then. So now you can imagine Pittsburgh
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies. You this guy Nick Perry, He's
Speaker 1: been a fixture in the Pittsburgh scene for a while,
Speaker 1: and we get into the seventies and Pittsburgh's cooking along
Speaker 1: even though everything's not really going well for the city
Speaker 1: in terms of the steel industry is shutting down, so
Speaker 1: it's a hard time for this, you know, industrial city,
Speaker 1: this blue collar city. Nick Perry is there for the people.
Speaker 1: He keeps them Pittsburgh proud, got it right now, Just
Speaker 1: give you a sense of this. When he would go
Speaker 1: on to his show, he loved to like play up
Speaker 1: as being a TV announcer. He made sure that he
Speaker 1: was brought on with the right flair. So he had
Speaker 1: this this catchphrase you would always hear, and they say,
Speaker 1: it's the man with all the dollars, the kingpin himself,
Speaker 1: Nick Perry, right, just the cheesy right now. The newspeople
Speaker 1: at the station, they still love this guy. He was like,
Speaker 1: you know, not he's you know, not a hard journalist,
Speaker 1: but he's not just like a hand that. They're like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's totally one of the crew. And they love him
Speaker 1: because he loves Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh loves him. The news
Speaker 1: anchor Stu Emery at w t A, it's such a
Speaker 1: good news anchor name do you remember here with the
Speaker 1: traffic on the fives we'll be back with weather. His
Speaker 1: real name is like Philibert FT News, so Philibert FT.
Speaker 1: He said, and I quote Nick Perry was very Pittsburgh,
Speaker 1: and he was very Pittsburgh and his questions and the
Speaker 1: kind of people who were on the show. He was
Speaker 1: down to earth and humorous and fun and his strong
Speaker 1: personality came through and he was just about his dapper
Speaker 1: and restaurant as I had seen. All right, Yeah, we
Speaker 1: put a little more on Pepper on this also a
Speaker 1: dapper dresser now w t A E News director Joe
Speaker 1: Raveto he also had something to say about the what
Speaker 1: we call the essence of Nick Perry. Joe Rovito said,
Speaker 1: and I quote Nick became a local star with bowling
Speaker 1: for dollars. That was his real breakthrough to the public.
Speaker 1: He did a beautiful job with it. He was very knowledgeable,
Speaker 1: a bowling enthusiast. He took it all very seriously. It
Speaker 1: was a big deal of him, and he was a
Speaker 1: very conscientious guy. As a reporter, anchor and host of
Speaker 1: that program. Knows he calls him a reporter because he
Speaker 1: talks to people. Yeah, reporter. Now during the seventies, as
Speaker 1: I said, he becomes this beloved figure the city needs him.
Speaker 1: He loves Pittsburgh bowling for dollars. To give you a
Speaker 1: sense of this, it was regularly drawing more viewers during
Speaker 1: its nighttime broadcast than the nighttime news at the time
Speaker 1: on all of the other stations. Yeah, that's they're like,
Speaker 1: we don't need to know what Gerald Ford said about inflation.
Speaker 1: Just give us this of intense splits exact escap Nick
Speaker 1: Perry also would turn to the people of Pittsburgh who
Speaker 1: go out there, give them some love. They give him
Speaker 1: some love that I kind of like to picture it
Speaker 1: like you've seen Anchorman, the Will Ferrell movie. So swap
Speaker 1: San Diego for Pittsburgh news anchor for bowling for dollars,
Speaker 1: and you basically got the vibe. That's what it sounds like. Okay,
Speaker 1: So in V one we get our big complication, the
Speaker 1: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. They decided to snatch business away from
Speaker 1: all the mobbed up numbers runners. And they say, you
Speaker 1: know what, we can do this, We can do bad
Speaker 1: all by ourselves. So they come up with the Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: State Lottery. Now this is a thing at the time.
Speaker 1: A lot of the numbers and for those who don't
Speaker 1: know numbers, Elizabeth is a game where somebody would basically
Speaker 1: draw random numbers and then everybody in the community they
Speaker 1: would be guessing what those numbers would be right every day,
Speaker 1: and so this was what the lottery replaced. It was
Speaker 1: basically the local numbers game, and you had you go
Speaker 1: to your numbers guy and tell the numbers you think
Speaker 1: you're gonna win. And the numbers were picked usually from
Speaker 1: like either a racetrack, how the finishes of horses went,
Speaker 1: or some something in the newspaper. It would be something
Speaker 1: that nobody could control, so that way everybody could see
Speaker 1: whatever is occurring. Well, the lottery needs this same type
Speaker 1: of thing, so they decide, you know what, We're gonna
Speaker 1: do a TV show and we'll broadcast the numbers. And
Speaker 1: so they have this nightly broadcast that will show the
Speaker 1: winning numbers as their drawings, so everybody can see it
Speaker 1: at the exact same time and they know nothing hanky
Speaker 1: going on, right, So who do you think they pick
Speaker 1: to host this show? Did w T A S. Nick Perry? Ye?
Speaker 1: So Nick Perry, he's selected as the announcer at this
Speaker 1: farmer World War two veteran. This he's also, by the way,
Speaker 1: a like a Sunday School kind of guy. He he's
Speaker 1: a choir leader at his church, like Salt of the Earth.
Speaker 1: Good guy. Right, And three years later a grand jury
Speaker 1: would determine that Pennsylvanias should bring charges against Nick Perry
Speaker 1: for colluding to rig the state lottery. So had what
Speaker 1: happened in this time? And now I'd also like to
Speaker 1: point out that this dude had the rank to merity
Speaker 1: to rig the lottery and to rob the lottery live
Speaker 1: on the air. Oh right, allegedly all allegedly, but I
Speaker 1: guess I would say allegedly, because so he did it.
Speaker 1: He did it, the state says. So, now, after this
Speaker 1: short break, we'll get into the triple six fix of
Speaker 1: the Pennsylvania lottery. He doesn't do you like to play
Speaker 1: the lottery? Z babies? Uh? You know I always talked
Speaker 1: to people about how I've talked to everyone random I stopped.
Speaker 1: People know I always wants to talk about the lottery.
Speaker 1: I've said many many times. I have this plan if
Speaker 1: I won the lottery, like how I would divvy up
Speaker 1: the money. And I don't want it to get into
Speaker 1: it now proprietary information, but I'd be really good at
Speaker 1: winning the lottery if I ever bought a ticket, thoughts
Speaker 1: you just said about to ask you have these plans,
Speaker 1: but do you play? No, you can't win if you
Speaker 1: don't play. That's that the ads tell me, yeah, right now.
Speaker 1: And then they'll say like warning, you know, if you
Speaker 1: have a gambling problem, don't do this. Do you have
Speaker 1: a gambling problem? Is that way? You don't do it? No?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Okay, Well for you, those are the
Speaker 1: people who don't know about lotteries. They have various ones.
Speaker 1: There's the scratch off kids, right, and then there's like
Speaker 1: the the weekly draws, like the Mega millions where you
Speaker 1: pick six numbers, and then there are smaller lotteries. They
Speaker 1: are more based on what I was talking earlier about
Speaker 1: the numbers game, where they have what's called the daily
Speaker 1: Number or the daily draw. Right. So the daily draw,
Speaker 1: a person goes in Pennsylvania, at least they go and
Speaker 1: they buy a ticket, and they can spend between fifty
Speaker 1: cents and five dollars on this ticket, and then they
Speaker 1: can pick a certain amount of numbers based on how
Speaker 1: much they spend, and they get to pick three numbers,
Speaker 1: so the numbers between zero and nine and the order
Speaker 1: of the numbers matters. So if you put three, one,
Speaker 1: four and the numbers are one four three that are drawn,
Speaker 1: you don't win. It's got to be exactly the way.
Speaker 1: So there's there's two forms. It's the numbers and the order.
Speaker 1: Right at one minute before seven pm every night, Nick
Speaker 1: Perry and a local senior citizen go onto the w
Speaker 1: t a E set and they appear on screen and
Speaker 1: the senior citizen gets to select at random the numbers.
Speaker 1: And keep in mind the senior also gets picked at
Speaker 1: random from all of the area senior citizen's homes. They
Speaker 1: don't go and pick the most like charismatic, They just
Speaker 1: pick citizens at random and they put them on TV
Speaker 1: Summer Winners Summer completely. You should look up on YouTube
Speaker 1: w t A E. Daily. Yesterday, I'll put up one
Speaker 1: clip of the moment when the rigging occurred, and you
Speaker 1: can see the how it goes. How it so this
Speaker 1: randomly selected senior citizen who gets to go up there
Speaker 1: and randomly select the balls. They're supposed to stand there
Speaker 1: as the balls are and if you've seen this, they'll
Speaker 1: be in like a clear like bubble and they'll be
Speaker 1: bouncing around. And so for this one, each number has
Speaker 1: its own bubble. So there's zero, three, nine balls and
Speaker 1: each one they're all jumbling around and all of a
Speaker 1: sudden once shoots up to the top. And the senior
Speaker 1: citizen is in charge of turning it around to the
Speaker 1: camera can see it, which is not the job I'd
Speaker 1: give them, but you know, it works out for some
Speaker 1: great fun. And when you watch now, if you have
Speaker 1: all three winning numbers and you get them in the
Speaker 1: order they were selected, you could win five hundred dollars
Speaker 1: for every dollar you bet. So the most you can
Speaker 1: win is two dollars from two thousand five day. Sorry,
Speaker 1: quickly redo my math there. Yeah, you load up your
Speaker 1: tickets all right now. If you don't, you dots you
Speaker 1: get the two anyway. So lottery officials in the TV station,
Speaker 1: everybody's taking these daily drawings very seriously. There's millions of
Speaker 1: dollars riding on it, right. So the machines they get
Speaker 1: locked up after each drawing. They have like a whole
Speaker 1: special space. They're locked up in the space that has
Speaker 1: two keys required to open the lock, just like a
Speaker 1: nuclear submarine watching nukes. The Pennsylvania Lottery official they had
Speaker 1: a turn a key. The w C A E. People
Speaker 1: turn a key. And also, by the way, the official
Speaker 1: would regularly, the state official lottery official would regularly visit
Speaker 1: w t A, and they would check the machines, check
Speaker 1: the balls, and make sure everything was up to code.
Speaker 1: I bringing up up to stuff. They take the locks.
Speaker 1: So they didn't know when these periodic inspections would be.
Speaker 1: They don't know when the ball checkers are coming exactly.
Speaker 1: Nobody knows when someone's gonna show up going. I'm here
Speaker 1: to check your balls, totally totally random the States balls. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: by the way, since you were focus on the balls,
Speaker 1: the State's balls, they were measured in wide and determined
Speaker 1: always to be exactly. Can you guess how much would
Speaker 1: it be a pink pong ball? Ways, no, good guess?
Speaker 1: One point seven five milligrams. Now, for comparison sake, a
Speaker 1: dollar bill weighs about a gram, So it would take
Speaker 1: about five hundred and seventy lottery balls to weigh them
Speaker 1: same amount as one dollar bill. That's how light these
Speaker 1: things are, five hundred and seventy of them anyway, so
Speaker 1: they made sure that they all were exactly the same weight.
Speaker 1: Close good guess? Good guess? Well, I can tell you
Speaker 1: about it now it's not gonna be easy to rig
Speaker 1: a lot of getting ahead of it's fun. Don't mind
Speaker 1: your getting ahead yourself. The science is there to ponder.
Speaker 1: It is right there before us, which is how are
Speaker 1: you going to get these balls? And you've got a
Speaker 1: senior citizen working as like your helper as your stage assistant.
Speaker 1: Can't be something that they're gonna mess up. So what
Speaker 1: do you do to rig this? Right now? Nick Perry,
Speaker 1: He's like, okay, I got an idea for big pay day.
Speaker 1: We rigged the lottery. Now he's facing the same question
Speaker 1: you're asking. He's like, but how do I do it?
Speaker 1: He's like, okay, and you know what I need? First?
Speaker 1: A money man. So he's like, okay, I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: two for the price of one. He happens to have
Speaker 1: these two childhood friends. They're called the Moragos Brothers. The
Speaker 1: Morogos Brothers are a pair of like basically Greek small
Speaker 1: time hoodlums, and they're Peter and Jack Moragos. They run
Speaker 1: a cigarette vending machine business with Nick Perry. So they
Speaker 1: take Nick Perry's legitimate money and they run it through
Speaker 1: this vending machine business and they, you know, they get
Speaker 1: a little business juice. Right. So he comes and he's like, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I got a new business venture. They're like, tell us
Speaker 1: all about it, Nick, and like how they've gone. How
Speaker 1: Nick has gone from like hey, everybody do He's got
Speaker 1: two faces. So this Nick Perry, he goes, okay, you guys,
Speaker 1: you're down, and they're like, we do business. We trust
Speaker 1: you. You You say it's a good idea, We're gonna do it.
Speaker 1: We're in. So he's like, okay, I got my I
Speaker 1: got my money. Man. So then he goes, okay, now
Speaker 1: what else do I need? I need an inside guy.
Speaker 1: So he's like, okay, this is gonna get difficult, this
Speaker 1: is risky. This is where I can all. I can
Speaker 1: blow it all right here, so I gotta be smart
Speaker 1: about this. It's like, okay, I know who I need.
Speaker 1: He goes and sidles up to fifty two year old
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania Lottery official Edward Level, like, hey, man, looking good
Speaker 1: in them chinos today? You ever thought about some bell bottoms?
Speaker 1: With those? I can get you in a green number.
Speaker 1: He's just sexually harassing him. Okay, you fill up the
Speaker 1: bell bottomed boy, get you a turtleneck. Looking good anyway.
Speaker 1: So this dude Edward Plevel. He's essentially the security guard
Speaker 1: who's in charge of guaranteeing these machines have nothing going
Speaker 1: wrong with them at the ball's way exactly one point
Speaker 1: seven five milligrams. And so going to him is that's
Speaker 1: the move right? Clevels like you wanta do what? Hey?
Speaker 1: I like it? Plevels into it. He wants to get right.
Speaker 1: So he's like, okay, now I got my money guy,
Speaker 1: I got my inside guy. I need a fixer. I
Speaker 1: need a tech specialist. So who can make this all happen?
Speaker 1: Nick Perry turns to someone friend of the show close
Speaker 1: to him. He's like, hey, the w t a e
Speaker 1: art director. I was thinking this, Oh look at you,
Speaker 1: criminal mastermind. So Joseph Back, the art director and renowned
Speaker 1: for his hands painting, really good with hand painting, especially
Speaker 1: the campagnted letters and so forth, and which is as
Speaker 1: an art we've discussed. Perry sidles up to Joe Back
Speaker 1: one day. He's a gay man, how you doing? I
Speaker 1: really like that leather Jackie harassing everybody where? Did you
Speaker 1: get them shooting? He's like, hey, man, what would you
Speaker 1: say if I told you I could? You could make
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand dollars. Joe back looks him up and
Speaker 1: down in the most Pennsylvanu way possible. He listening me, says,
Speaker 1: who do I have to kill? Oh? I think that
Speaker 1: it was going to be an indecent proposal. I ain't
Speaker 1: laying down for this one. But someone's gone out. So
Speaker 1: he's like, all right, I can make a hundred the
Speaker 1: easy way or the hard way with no wet work. Okay.
Speaker 1: So he's into it. He's like, what do I gotta do?
Speaker 1: He's like, I want you to swap some balls. He's like, swapa,
Speaker 1: this is getting a little interesting. Nick, what kind of
Speaker 1: balls are we talking here? And he's like, I'll come
Speaker 1: back to the gutter yea, and show me those pants again.
Speaker 1: Spin around. He drops one of the balls on purpose
Speaker 1: and take it up a little smack on the tish.
Speaker 1: So Nick Perry, he gives Joe Buck a scale and
Speaker 1: he goes, Okay, I need you to go buy thirty
Speaker 1: ping pong balls. I want you to weigh them. Just
Speaker 1: go to any sporting good store, paint them to match
Speaker 1: the official lottery balls. You gotta number the seven, the eight,
Speaker 1: and nine to match exactly, and you won't be able
Speaker 1: to take home an example, so you have to do
Speaker 1: it for memory. And he's like, bro hand painted letter
Speaker 1: is my jam I got this? So Joe back, He
Speaker 1: takes the thirty ping pong balls, he takes the scale,
Speaker 1: He goes home, and he gets to work. Now, of
Speaker 1: course it's gonna acquire a little experimentation. He's like, how
Speaker 1: am I gonna do this? So he tries, like, first, powder,
Speaker 1: seems like, maybe I can put a powder coating on
Speaker 1: it and I'll make the balls different the way, different amounts.
Speaker 1: That doesn't work. He's like, how about an applicate. Maybe
Speaker 1: I can put like an applicat on there that like
Speaker 1: the sticker is heavy. That doesn't work. He's like, I
Speaker 1: got it white latex paint, right, basically house paint. He's like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna his house paint. So he injects the ping
Speaker 1: pong balls with latex paints and then paints the outsides
Speaker 1: and so he can make the fake balls. They would
Speaker 1: all still bounce and jumble around in the machine, but
Speaker 1: they won't. Only one ball will be lighter than all
Speaker 1: the other nine, Like, there's nine balls in there. I
Speaker 1: guess ten balls in there. There nine and then he
Speaker 1: has one ball that's not waited, so all the rest
Speaker 1: they will bounce around and float because there he has them.
Speaker 1: He's been experimenting make sure that they will bounce around.
Speaker 1: Only one has the lightness to make it to the
Speaker 1: t C. I was thinking like he would maybe paint
Speaker 1: the numbers on there with like he'd put some sort
Speaker 1: of metal into the paint and make it heavier paint. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's a really good idea. Yeah, they did not go
Speaker 1: with metal paint. They just decided to. They didn't call me, no,
Speaker 1: they really should have. Unfortunately you weren't born, so that
Speaker 1: is part of the that was a little difficult. So anyway,
Speaker 1: they decide add weight to nine of the ten balls
Speaker 1: in each machine, and they pick weight. We can't do that.
Speaker 1: We've got to let there be two balls because if
Speaker 1: it's just one ball, it'll be very obvious. So we'll
Speaker 1: mix up two balls. And then the odds are basically
Speaker 1: only a few combinations. So they pick the four and
Speaker 1: six balls to not doctor and they don't do the rest.
Speaker 1: So now they're only eight combinations that could possibly be
Speaker 1: the winning combinations for those like yourself and I with
Speaker 1: the math skills. We have. The combinations end up being
Speaker 1: triple four four four six four six four or four
Speaker 1: six six, or they are six four four six four
Speaker 1: six six six four and lastly the best combo triple
Speaker 1: six six six six, the winning numbers of the beasts exactly.
Speaker 1: So now all this left to do is purchase some
Speaker 1: lottery tickets to it. So the Moragos brothers now come
Speaker 1: back into the picture. So if they go and they
Speaker 1: meet up Nick at the local St. Nick's Orthodox Church,
Speaker 1: because that's for all the good criminal conspiracies go down.
Speaker 1: He's like, meet me in a pu seven. So they
Speaker 1: slide on behind the pew behind them, they start talking
Speaker 1: about how to buy tickets. They exchange for like their
Speaker 1: cigarette concession business profits and here's your recent payments. He's like, okay,
Speaker 1: here's the plan. Keep the profits, go buy a bunch
Speaker 1: of lottery tickets. They're like, oh really. He's like yeah,
Speaker 1: but hey, we're gonna do this like real LaCOSA Nostra
Speaker 1: mafia stuff. Spread it out. Be smart about to go
Speaker 1: to one person and buy ten thousand dollars worth of tickets.
Speaker 1: It's like, okay, okay, we're gonna go to Philly. He's like,
Speaker 1: wait minute, you gonna go to Philly. Why did you
Speaker 1: go to Philly. That's Nicky Scarfolk's place. Don't go to
Speaker 1: Phillies Like, that's why they'll think it's the mob. They'll
Speaker 1: put it on Nicky Scarfolks. Brilliant. He's like, actually that's
Speaker 1: pretty good. Pittsburgh may come back to us. Go to Philly.
Speaker 1: They're gonna go to Philly and buy up all the
Speaker 1: tick sets now to maximize their score. The Morago's brothers
Speaker 1: smart hoodlumps they are. They're like, okay, how about we
Speaker 1: take out a bank loan and really out here. So
Speaker 1: they take out a twenty dollar bank loan. Don't tell
Speaker 1: Nick Perry. They go and buy a bunch of more tickets.
Speaker 1: Now they got this extra twenty grand and all the
Speaker 1: money Nick Perry front of them. And they go and
Speaker 1: they pile into their giant white Cadillac because nobody's gonna
Speaker 1: remember that, and they tour around the Filly area and
Speaker 1: they buy up all the lottery tickets that they can afford.
Speaker 1: Do you think they did like method acting or like,
Speaker 1: you know, I just imagine that they get out of
Speaker 1: the car and they go into the little convenience store
Speaker 1: and their play their play acting, like oh, someone told
Speaker 1: me I should play the lottery. I never do this.
Speaker 1: Let me buy. I don't know how many should maybe two.
Speaker 1: My grandpappy sent me down here to buy some lottery tickets.
Speaker 1: I don't know anything about it, but his favorite numbers
Speaker 1: are four and six. Could you help me figure them out?
Speaker 1: And they just keep doing this, and then they have
Speaker 1: to wear costumes and disguises from shop to shop. I
Speaker 1: wish they did that. You're gonna be so disappointed with
Speaker 1: what they actually did. Oh yeah, So they purchased fourteen
Speaker 1: dollars in one dollar tickets and they're now looking at
Speaker 1: basically about a four point two million dollar come up
Speaker 1: if the tickets hit, and they will hit because it's fixed.
Speaker 1: So yeah, exactly. So later on in that same day
Speaker 1: there will be the daily draw because they have to
Speaker 1: get the tickets for that same day. So they're all
Speaker 1: trying to get this all done before the seven o'clock draw.
Speaker 1: They get it all done, and that's when Nick Perry
Speaker 1: steps onto the w t a E Set, ready to
Speaker 1: do his part to rig the state lottery. Everyone else
Speaker 1: has done their parts, it's time for Nick Perry. He
Speaker 1: catches SIGHTE a lottery official, Ed Plevil lottery official gives
Speaker 1: him the nod exactly a lot of the sting. He's like, okay,
Speaker 1: gives them the nose swipe. They use the two keys.
Speaker 1: They unlocked the lottery machine storage area. They am so nervous.
Speaker 1: Right now, we o the machines up to the TV
Speaker 1: station set plevel. He leaves the machines and the balls unattended, just,
Speaker 1: you know, just walks away. I gotta go move my car.
Speaker 1: He's gone for thirty minutes now. Normally they bring the
Speaker 1: senior citizen on to the set to practice during this
Speaker 1: time with the machines while the cameras are on. Instead,
Speaker 1: they don't. They leave the senior citizen in the green
Speaker 1: room for the full thirty minutes. Nobody tells her what's
Speaker 1: going on, so she's just sitting and there, confused, like
Speaker 1: what's coming now? Que Joe back in action. The art
Speaker 1: director does his part. Joe back passes the weighted balls
Speaker 1: to a stage hand and asked the stage hand to
Speaker 1: put the doctor balls into the machine. Possibly a mistake,
Speaker 1: possibly not change out. The stage hand is in on it.
Speaker 1: He's been contacted, so box the stage hand act fast.
Speaker 1: He's like, I need a guy to help me. So
Speaker 1: they make their move, they get the balls in, they
Speaker 1: swap out the other balls. Everything's going huge pay days
Speaker 1: lined up for everybody involved to pull it off. Nobody
Speaker 1: sees them. Now we are a few minutes before seven pm.
Speaker 1: It's time for the daily Draw. If you can believe it,
Speaker 1: can you guess how many people are watching? Oh like
Speaker 1: nine million people, very close six six million people. Six
Speaker 1: million people tune in to watch those lotty numbers, which
Speaker 1: is more than all the other news stations are getting
Speaker 1: at this time. So every most to Pittsburgh that is
Speaker 1: watching TV at this time is watching this event. And
Speaker 1: now wait a second, this is a state lottery, state lottery,
Speaker 1: so this is actually all over that's just at the station.
Speaker 1: There's six million. It's just six million people watching this station,
Speaker 1: and that so that it's broadcast at other stations, broadcast
Speaker 1: throughout yest it. I'm slow good, don't cool with it.
Speaker 1: So now the daily draw. They had the local senior citizen.
Speaker 1: I told her she's waiting in the green room. Well,
Speaker 1: her name is Violet Lowry, and they say, Violet Lowry,
Speaker 1: could you please come up to the set, And so
Speaker 1: she was like okay, she calls on up there, so
Speaker 1: we have viol Lowry creeping up to the set. Joe
Speaker 1: Buck is on the and the wings watching, the stage
Speaker 1: hand is watching. Nick Perry is waiting on the set
Speaker 1: for her to get there. She's the last piece of
Speaker 1: this puzzle. All she has to do is take the
Speaker 1: weighted balls and turn them around in the right order.
Speaker 1: And after this quick break, I'll tell you what happens
Speaker 1: when she steps onto the Okay, Elizabeth, yes I left you.
Speaker 1: We were at the W T A E. Set. The
Speaker 1: tensions were hot. Oh I am on pins and needles
Speaker 1: this whole all those ads played and it went on
Speaker 1: for a really long time, and the pins and the
Speaker 1: needles have been puncturing my bed. D Well, I'm here
Speaker 1: to relieve you of that pain and anxiety. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I want you to picture it. Oh, yes, close your eyes.
Speaker 1: Eighties something year old Violet Lowry arrives on set. She
Speaker 1: shows up ready to pick some numbers. She's there for
Speaker 1: the balls. She's escorted from the green room, where she
Speaker 1: has been asked to wait for half an hour. Finally
Speaker 1: it's six. Someone takes herund to the set. The stage
Speaker 1: hand rolls the large lottery machines into play. Nick Perry
Speaker 1: stands off stage, ready to do his bit, waiting for
Speaker 1: ast two. At sixty nine, the announcer goes to work.
Speaker 1: It's the man with all the dollars, the king pit himself,
Speaker 1: Nick Perry, Lottery official Ed plevel leads Violet Lowry to
Speaker 1: the lottery machines. The machines kick on on the bubble.
Speaker 1: The balls start going. There's all this frenetic action. The
Speaker 1: fans are kicked to life and everything that. Everyone's excited.
Speaker 1: The ping pong balls bouncing against each other. What's gonna happen?
Speaker 1: The balls start to lift on this currents of air.
Speaker 1: They're all jumbling around. Looks perfectly normal. Then, as Nick
Speaker 1: Perry explains the game to those watching, I quote, good
Speaker 1: evening everyone, It's time for the live drawing up the
Speaker 1: daily number Thursday. Each of our three machines contains ten balls.
Speaker 1: Numbers zero to nine will draw one digit from each machine.
Speaker 1: Now mix the balls in the first machine and the second,
Speaker 1: and now the third machine. Drawing tonight will be Senior
Speaker 1: Citizen bio Let Lowry are supervising comes of a state
Speaker 1: Lottery Security Officials District Manager Ed Plebo. Violet Lowry watches
Speaker 1: the doctor balls jumping around and tumble. She looks a
Speaker 1: little intimidated. The first ball lists up the shoot and
Speaker 1: Will kind of goes do it. She lives over. She
Speaker 1: twists the number around and she shows, oh, it's a six,
Speaker 1: and now Violet draw the first digit please sex, and
Speaker 1: the second digit six, and now the third digit six,
Speaker 1: and there you have it. Pennsylvania's daily lottery number is
Speaker 1: six six six. If you've got it, come and get it.
Speaker 1: If not, better luck tomorrow. Just like that, the lottery
Speaker 1: had been robbed. Is the winner. Nick Perry and his
Speaker 1: group they all go excited. They've done it. They've rigged
Speaker 1: the state lottery. They're all about to be millions of
Speaker 1: dollars richer, and six million people watched them do it
Speaker 1: at home, and Hazels like, oh my god, I just
Speaker 1: unleashed the beast. I pulled six six six, like I's
Speaker 1: in there with like holy water. No one's going to
Speaker 1: talk to her after that. I can't. My church group
Speaker 1: will not. Something was going to happen to Hazel when
Speaker 1: you were doing your little story. I didn't mean to worry.
Speaker 1: Yeah it's okay, so Edd plebble. He goes and re
Speaker 1: secures the machines, they take the two keys, they lock
Speaker 1: it back up. Now, just before that, he had to
Speaker 1: have enough time for Joe Bach to slide in there,
Speaker 1: grab the Doctor Balls machines, switch back in the original balls,
Speaker 1: and then make his escape. Allows us to have a
Speaker 1: couple of moments for him to do that. Then they
Speaker 1: lock up the machines. So now Joe back, he takes
Speaker 1: the Doctor Balls home. He piles the balls into an
Speaker 1: empty paint can sets them all on fire, destroying any evidence.
Speaker 1: Smart dude, Right, yeah, that's good. We've gotten rid of
Speaker 1: at least one of the So now it's time to
Speaker 1: collect the winnings. The Marago's brothers re into the picture.
Speaker 1: They climb back in their land yard. The giant white
Speaker 1: caddy cruise on over to Philly looking to pick up
Speaker 1: their money, and the brothers they drive around collecting their
Speaker 1: cash pay days. And then they come back to Pittsburgh
Speaker 1: and they meet in the cemetery and they secretly meet
Speaker 1: Nick Perry and they give him the first part of
Speaker 1: his cut. Now, do you know where they were picking
Speaker 1: up the pay They didn't. They wouldn't. They have to
Speaker 1: go to the state capitol, to an office somewhere or
Speaker 1: local lottery tickets, so yeah, they could do. They go
Speaker 1: to the store where they bought it in the store
Speaker 1: has to pay it up. I don't know if the
Speaker 1: store had to pay it up. But they went around
Speaker 1: collecting and so in all the news stories seemed that
Speaker 1: they were getting from the stores, there's like local lottery offices.
Speaker 1: I think maybe maybe there were local lottery I did
Speaker 1: not look into who they are actually redeeming the tickets
Speaker 1: with a scale. Yeah, and I know you're into like
Speaker 1: the paperwork. I was just like to get the money,
Speaker 1: all right. So they bring him thirty five tho dollars
Speaker 1: in a brown paper bag and they handed to him
Speaker 1: in a cemetery, you know, like, here's your first cut.
Speaker 1: This will just be one of many envelopes to come.
Speaker 1: He's like, I got it. And they got a couple
Speaker 1: of days to collect their winnings. You don't have to
Speaker 1: get it all that the first day. So they're taking
Speaker 1: their time, right. No one was the wiser at first,
Speaker 1: but someone had noticed, and that someone was named Anthony Gross.
Speaker 1: So Gross. Now I want you to know about this man,
Speaker 1: Anthony Grosso. He knew something about rig games because he
Speaker 1: had served time in prison for racketeering. He later would
Speaker 1: serve time after these events for quote, tax evasion and
Speaker 1: violating federal gambling loss. He was what you would call
Speaker 1: a mobster, Big Anthony, Big Anthony, real live mobster, not
Speaker 1: part of like the Scarfolk family. But he had been
Speaker 1: legitimately running a numbers game for forty years, a local
Speaker 1: numbers game. And the interesting part is that the Moroco's
Speaker 1: brothers thought, you know what, we should rob him while
Speaker 1: we're doing this. Yeah, and you know how the brothers
Speaker 1: when Pennsylvania created the lottery, what they had done was
Speaker 1: to basically take over the numbers game from the mob.
Speaker 1: The mob was pretty much, you know, various mobs, but
Speaker 1: it was just say, for the sake of time, the mob.
Speaker 1: They took over all the bookmakers and numbers runners and
Speaker 1: they said, okay, hey, how about give us the money?
Speaker 1: Were the state and people were like okay, cool. The
Speaker 1: mobs like no, no, no, no. How much do they pay?
Speaker 1: And when you win? Is it one of those education
Speaker 1: lotteries where they go to senior citizens California's education the
Speaker 1: exactly because this part of the look see where the
Speaker 1: money is going? Keeping Violet lotry going. They called her
Speaker 1: Hazel it's violent. Violet. Yeah, sorry, sorry violent, she's not
Speaker 1: here to hear it. So Anthony grows our real live
Speaker 1: mobster and he uh and his ilk. They hear that
Speaker 1: the Pennsylvania State Lottery is trying to take over their
Speaker 1: millions of dollars industry. They're like, what are those mooks doing? Okay,
Speaker 1: how much did they pay out? When you win? People
Speaker 1: are like, oh, hey, Big Anthony, they pay five dollars
Speaker 1: to one. Okay, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna
Speaker 1: pay six. So they run the exact same lottery off
Speaker 1: of the state's lottery numbers and they say, you pick
Speaker 1: the numbers and you buy the ticket from us, we'll
Speaker 1: pay six one. They turn the state lottery back in legitimate.
Speaker 1: So what this means is that the Moroco's brothers knew this.
Speaker 1: So they're like, hey, if we go take some of
Speaker 1: the mob tickets, we'll get paid six hundred to one
Speaker 1: instead of five to one. So they get greedy and
Speaker 1: they go and buy mob tickets and then they come
Speaker 1: back to them Bob and they're like, hey, pay up.
Speaker 1: Oh that is a recipe for disaster. So Big Anthony
Speaker 1: he's like, um, not too into this. He's like, how
Speaker 1: how dare these people rob me? Big? Anthony grows, So,
Speaker 1: I've been in the numbers games since they will knee
Speaker 1: hid to Grasshoper. So he then decides to do what
Speaker 1: all mops as you do in a pinch. He turns
Speaker 1: to the state and he said, hey, you should investigate
Speaker 1: these guys. He goes right to the state. They're totally
Speaker 1: using the infrastructure for their benefit, either to ride their
Speaker 1: lot of setup or to be their enforcers. That's that's wise,
Speaker 1: straight Pennsylvania. Those are guys ding ding Dan. So Anthony grows.
Speaker 1: So when that first move fails in the State's like, look, look,
Speaker 1: we don't want people to think that the state. You're
Speaker 1: saying it's rigged. We don't have proof of that. We
Speaker 1: can't have people believing it's rigged. This is a new thing.
Speaker 1: We think you're a mobster and you watch your game back,
Speaker 1: so why don't you blow anything? Gross was excuse me?
Speaker 1: He's like, Okay, it's no problem. I got other avenues.
Speaker 1: So he goes to the journalist. He's like, hey, journalists,
Speaker 1: I got a story for you. The state knows that
Speaker 1: the lottery has been rigged, and they don't want to investigate.
Speaker 1: So the journal starts writing about say it's like damn it.
Speaker 1: So then now like, okay, they announced a big investigation, right.
Speaker 1: The investigation is basically a show trial. It's not really
Speaker 1: intended to do anything. Anthony Grosso is really disappointed in
Speaker 1: this development. So Anthony gross So keeps the pressure on,
Speaker 1: so he starts a newspaper. So he just keeps basically
Speaker 1: funneling stuff because he not only he figures out who
Speaker 1: did it. He knows it was the Morogua's brothers. He
Speaker 1: knows who was involved and who took his money. So
Speaker 1: he's like, look it's this guy, it's that guy, Go
Speaker 1: go follow this paper trail. Finally, in September, newspaper story
Speaker 1: from the area reports quote. Allegations that the a drawing
Speaker 1: may have been tampered with first surfaced in early May,
Speaker 1: when Anthony Grosso, who has been called the numbers kingpin
Speaker 1: in Pittsburgh by the State Crime Commission, told reporters that
Speaker 1: the drawing had been fixed. Organized crime figures had noticed
Speaker 1: heavy betting on numbers using the four six combination. After
Speaker 1: the news stories broke and talk of the triple six
Speaker 1: fix spread all across Pennsylvania, all of them, Bob gets interested,
Speaker 1: and of course now the state can't ignore it, so
Speaker 1: they're like, damn it. So the investigators started actually doing
Speaker 1: an investigation. Now after doing the fake investigation back in May,
Speaker 1: now in September they do a real investigation. They go
Speaker 1: around and they go to a bar club called the
Speaker 1: Do drop in. Oh I like that, man, I knew
Speaker 1: you would. Now I have a really quick question. They
Speaker 1: only rigged at the one time, right, yes, ing at
Speaker 1: the one time to get the four million payday. And
Speaker 1: so even if you didn't buy the ticket from the Mob,
Speaker 1: if you took the ticket to the mob, they pay out.
Speaker 1: You got to buy a mob. You buy a Mob tickets.
Speaker 1: And did they buy Mob tickets the Mob tickets and
Speaker 1: took it? The Mob said pay us six to one.
Speaker 1: Basically because you rigged the lottery that you're now doing,
Speaker 1: you have essentially Roby got it. They're like, you're gonna
Speaker 1: bring us in on your fix. Yeah, and you're not
Speaker 1: going to bring us in on your fix, you dumb moose.
Speaker 1: So the owner of the Dude drop in. He when
Speaker 1: the investigate investigators are making news in the press, he
Speaker 1: calls the state and he goes, you know, what. There
Speaker 1: were these two suspitious man in a big white Cadillac
Speaker 1: who showed up at my place. They bought thousands of
Speaker 1: dollars of tickets, which they weren't supposed to do. The
Speaker 1: tickets all had the same combination. It is all for
Speaker 1: us and six is like they're saying in the news.
Speaker 1: And then they bought the tickets. But then it was
Speaker 1: the interesting thing was they called somebody and then they
Speaker 1: held the phone up to the machine so they could
Speaker 1: hear the tickets being printed. And then they spoken some
Speaker 1: foreign language over the phone with the person they were
Speaker 1: talking to, the foreign language being Greek. So wait, they
Speaker 1: used the phone at the Dude drop in. Can we
Speaker 1: call Nick Perry cell phone? So they say, hey, can
Speaker 1: we use your house phone? I gotta call my boss
Speaker 1: real quick. Also, by the way, you get a couple
Speaker 1: of thousand dollars of tickets because we're lazy, We're not
Speaker 1: going to go to a couple of hundreds were remember
Speaker 1: us in our big white caddy. Also, an employee of
Speaker 1: the Dude drop In recalled for the investigators, who then
Speaker 1: showed up to go what do you have for us? Oh? Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: there's these two guys in a big white Catillac. They
Speaker 1: had a very memorable platinum blond with them from what
Speaker 1: I recall. So they're doing everything you're not supposed to do,
Speaker 1: and the state investigators go, hey, do you guys have
Speaker 1: a phone records? They're like, oh, yeah, yeah. So they
Speaker 1: pulled up the phone records and the phone call from
Speaker 1: the dude drop in goes to Pittsburgh TV station wt
Speaker 1: So the investigators then go him out and immediately arrest
Speaker 1: the Moraguos brothers, who then immediately turned state's evidence and
Speaker 1: flip on their childhood friend Nick Perry. Charges against the
Speaker 1: Moraguos brothers are dropped, charges that are then filed against
Speaker 1: Joe Bach part director, Ed Plevel, the lottery state official,
Speaker 1: and Nick Perry. The news team at w t a
Speaker 1: E has to break the news while Perry is in
Speaker 1: the building, they go, they go with the breaking news.
Speaker 1: While he's there, he can look up and see the
Speaker 1: monitor like see himself, Like, well, that's not good, and
Speaker 1: then liked, did he get arrested at the station. Well,
Speaker 1: here's how it plays out. So w t a E
Speaker 1: news director Joe Raveto has to make the tough call.
Speaker 1: He's like, it's news. We gotta run it. It's even
Speaker 1: though he's in the in the building and this will
Speaker 1: be insensitive, we gotta run it. So they break the news.
Speaker 1: Nick Perry is there and he based really leaves and
Speaker 1: Sally Wiggins was the anchor at the time, and she's like,
Speaker 1: he's really nervous and did not want to do it.
Speaker 1: Joe Rivito was talking and he's like, look, you gotta
Speaker 1: do it. And I quote, here's how Joe Rivito remembered it.
Speaker 1: I knew he was sitting right upstairs, a guy I
Speaker 1: had known worked with. It was a very difficult period personally, professionally.
Speaker 1: It was a tough juggling act to do the right thing.
Speaker 1: Because of the fact we were the station that carried
Speaker 1: the lottery, because of the fact we knew Nick, we
Speaker 1: felt we had to pursue the story aggressively. It was
Speaker 1: a sad thing because here's a guy. You wipe that
Speaker 1: off the slate who was a really terrific guy. He
Speaker 1: was a terrific employee. But you can't wipe that off.
Speaker 1: This one thing has ruined this guy's life. It will
Speaker 1: smear this guy's life. He's done it and I knew
Speaker 1: it that day. So he's like I gotta do the
Speaker 1: right thing. They bust him out, so the Morago's brothers. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: they end up skating on all the charges. Nick Perry
Speaker 1: gets arrested, Joe Bak gets arrested, and Level gets arrested.
Speaker 1: Nick Perry. He's tried, convicted, and sentenced to three to
Speaker 1: seven years in prison in camp Hill, Pennsylvania. Ed Plevill
Speaker 1: gets two to seven years for his part. Joe back
Speaker 1: pleads guilty as well. Now, Nick Perry, when he left
Speaker 1: the courthouse, it was hard for his fans to imagine
Speaker 1: at the host of bowling for dollars when rigged the
Speaker 1: state lottery, and he would do it in such beautiful fabrics.
Speaker 1: It was just an insult to the Pittsburgh populace. Now,
Speaker 1: one fan wrote to the local newspaper, and I quote,
Speaker 1: He's like Joan of Arc being burned at the steak.
Speaker 1: I can't see why sixty three year old man who
Speaker 1: has a good living and is established in the community
Speaker 1: would do something like this. It's like Joan of Arc. Yes,
Speaker 1: he broke their hearts, so he had visions God told
Speaker 1: him to rob the lottery. Good It's like I must
Speaker 1: do this for the sake of Pittsburgh. So of course
Speaker 1: there's a movie of this whole ordeal because it's cinematic. Now,
Speaker 1: the film is called Lucky Numbers. It's loosely based on
Speaker 1: the Nick Perry story. In this case, the guy is
Speaker 1: a Harrisburg TV weather man and he's not the Pittsburgh
Speaker 1: host of Bowling for dollars. And in the film he's
Speaker 1: also kind of he's desperate for a big score. Was
Speaker 1: Nick Perry just kind of comes upon the idea? And uh,
Speaker 1: now can you guess who played the Nick Perry figure
Speaker 1: in Lucky Numbers? When was the movie? When the movie
Speaker 1: come out? The movie came out a while back. Oh,
Speaker 1: well that that clears it up for me. That's not
Speaker 1: a big in in the theater. So like more than
Speaker 1: thirty years ago, give me a decade the nineties. Okay?
Speaker 1: Uh did it have? Did they film the movie before
Speaker 1: this happened? In? All right? So in the he could
Speaker 1: fly his own plane to the theater. Harrison Ford, no
Speaker 1: bigger plane. So Nick Perry gets played in real life
Speaker 1: by John Travolta in a movie nobody's ever heard of
Speaker 1: movie of his life therebgh. Now, Dick Perry eventually does
Speaker 1: return to where he'd first found fame and acclaim and
Speaker 1: fortune bowling Lanes. The old sponsor for Bowling for Dollars
Speaker 1: was a loyal and true friend was Whisman Bowling Supplies.
Speaker 1: Whisman Bowling Supplies did not give up on him. They
Speaker 1: decided to hire him as a salesman. So he got
Speaker 1: a job. And his buddy Robert Whisman, a true true friend,
Speaker 1: tick the once beloved it now disgrace Bowling for Dollars announcer.
Speaker 1: And he said, and I quote, I couldn't have had
Speaker 1: anyone better. He was an asset to the business. Good
Speaker 1: buddies like. Look, they locked up his records. And firstly,
Speaker 1: I would say, Nick Perry's about his Pittsburgh as the
Speaker 1: three River Stadium. That guy, I just love him. Fun fact,
Speaker 1: since that fateful day in ninety when Nick Perry and
Speaker 1: his crew rigged the Pennsylvania State lottery, those same winning
Speaker 1: numbers have come up. Six six six has come up
Speaker 1: a few times. It's actually come up twenty four different
Speaker 1: subsequent drawings, and every single time the people they call
Speaker 1: it a Nick Perry. In fact, anything six six in
Speaker 1: certain parts of Pittsburgh and other parts of Pennsylvania is known.
Speaker 1: It's still referred to as a Nick Perry. Everywhere else
Speaker 1: it's the number of the Beast, but in Pittsburgh it's Perry.
Speaker 1: He's a beast six six. So Elizabeth, what does our
Speaker 1: ridiculous takeaway here? You know? I think, well, it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of a funny thing. He did a lot of
Speaker 1: people dirty, right, so, like the station gave him this
Speaker 1: cool show and everyone loved it. By the way, the
Speaker 1: station lost the lottery to that. They said, you guys
Speaker 1: can't be trusted to show this anymore, so, you know,
Speaker 1: and then now I'm wondering about the bowling supply guy.
Speaker 1: What's he skimming off the top? I don't trust this man.
Speaker 1: I noticed this didn't what did the what did the
Speaker 1: news director say? He did it to himself, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's one of those, like I would say, Shakespearean tragedies,
Speaker 1: but it's kind of well know, you know what it's
Speaker 1: like is it's like Joan of arc Yeah, that's really
Speaker 1: like that's the best analogy. When before you read me
Speaker 1: that quote, I was like, my it just feels like Jean,
Speaker 1: which who's the dauphin them on fire? My ridiculous takeaway
Speaker 1: would be never ever, And I mean never ever, ever,
Speaker 1: ever rob the mob. Oh yeah, that's all these dudes
Speaker 1: had to do. The Morocco's brothers. If they would have
Speaker 1: just said, hey, baby, you stay home, we're gonna get
Speaker 1: our rental card. We're gonna go and get some tickets.
Speaker 1: We'll be back at six o'clock. You know, everything will
Speaker 1: be cool, they're like, no, baby, getting the backut on
Speaker 1: your best for coke, because we're going to Philly to exactly.
Speaker 1: They got the caddie all shined up and they took
Speaker 1: that love boat for a cruise and they're like, nobody
Speaker 1: will remember this because we're gonna have this day. It's
Speaker 1: so memorable. You know. They decided to get rich on
Speaker 1: all this mob money and they blow it for everyone.
Speaker 1: But they didn't end up buying anything or do anything.
Speaker 1: They nobody got anything out of this. They get all
Speaker 1: greedy and then they don't do anything. The greed was
Speaker 1: just the feeling if I can't It's like it's that
Speaker 1: idea that your imagination will doom you, either with fear
Speaker 1: or with greed. On it's your imagination, Like, don't listen
Speaker 1: to that. Let the reality of the mob dictate your decisions.
Speaker 1: Should I rob the mob? I think I'd get away
Speaker 1: with it. Only the mob can have the mob's money.
Speaker 1: That's the rule of the mob. That's our money. Will
Speaker 1: kill you for that. So yeah, they're lucky they didn't
Speaker 1: get Oh no, yeah, they got very lucky. Anthony Grosser
Speaker 1: pretty much knew everybody would know with him. So he's like, look,
Speaker 1: they already got embarrassed, and the state's embarrassed. He's using
Speaker 1: the infrastructure for his benefit once again. Let them take
Speaker 1: care of this. You clean up this stuff, get some garbage,
Speaker 1: been on this. So the stupid criminals get caught, the
Speaker 1: unlucky ones get caught, and in this case, it was both.
Speaker 1: Oh and before we go, Elizabeth and I wanted to
Speaker 1: send out a special message to one of our listeners,
Speaker 1: Owen Colms. Your mom, Laura rode into the show and
Speaker 1: she told us you're having a rough go of it.
Speaker 1: We're sorry to hear that. On She also told us
Speaker 1: that you have a YouTube channel called the History Kid.
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear that. She says that you recreate
Speaker 1: historic battles. That sounds so cool. We're looking forward to
Speaker 1: checking out your channel. She also told us that July
Speaker 1: is your birthday. Well, we wanted to issue a very
Speaker 1: special Happy twelfth Birthday from your friends. A Ridiculous Crime.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us. I'm Elizabeth Dutton over there, this
Speaker 1: is Aaron Burnett. Hey, have it bad? It's me s Thennett.
Speaker 1: Let's give you a quote. You can find us online
Speaker 1: a Ridiculous Crime on both Twitter and Instagram. Gotta tip
Speaker 1: for us about a ridiculous crime you'd like to hear about.
Speaker 1: You want to confess to a ridiculous crime? You want
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Speaker 1: snitch on them. Email It's a ridiculous crime at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and
Speaker 1: Zaron Burnett, produced and edited by the head of the
Speaker 1: Rhode Island State Lottery, commissioned Dave Couston. Researches by this
Speaker 1: week's Super Mega Millions winner, Marisa Brown. The theme song
Speaker 1: is by Miraculous Brothers lookalikes Thomas Lee and Travis Dutton.
Speaker 1: Executive producers are Ben Can I get five on? Seven? Seven? Seven? Bold?
Speaker 1: And No? Did I just win? Oh? No, wait, that's
Speaker 1: a two Brown? Quiet say it one more time? We
Speaker 1: Dequeous Crew. Ridiculous Crime is a production of i heart
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