Quoted from PinMonk:There are states where you can win a lot with scratchers using math once a year when they hand out the unclaimed prizes. Takes a big bankroll to do it, like 100-200k, but you can reliably double your money or more. It's a small window, though, only a few weeks a year.
You're confusing the story about the Cash Winfall game in Massachusetts. James Harvey (MIT senior) led a group of "investors" and profited from the poor math skills of the folks who created Cash Winfall.
It shut down in 2005. I read about it in How Not to be Wrong, by Jordan Ellenberg. I'm sure some searching at duckduckgo.com would turn up extensive reading.