Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - He Hacked a Game Show And Won Big! - The Michael Larson story

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

This is the story of Michael Larson, the man who hacked the game show Press Your Luck and won.

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My whole world is falling apart right now. It's chaos. Watch the Hulu original series. The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. Now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for Bumno subscribers. Terms apply. So this guy tries to get rich by scamming a popular game show. And he kind of succeeds.

Now the guy's name is Michael, and he's an ice cream man. But Michael doesn't want to be an ice cream man. He wants to get rich quick. So he comes up with this wild plan to do just that. And he gets a bunch of TVs, and he stacks them all on top of each other, and he watches game shows constantly trying to find one that he could potentially win money from. And one day, he does find one. There's a new game show called Press Your Lock,

and the contestants are winning pretty good money, and Michael looks at these mediocre people playing, and he thinks, hey, I could do that. So he gets a VCR, and he records a bunch of episodes of the show, and he starts watching the tapes over and over again and studying them. And after several months, he finally figures it out. In the game, you win money by spinning the board and having it stop on a cash prize or a vacation.

And the board, it seems to light up in random places. But Michael's been watching these episodes and pausing and replaying the tapes looking for patterns. And after six months, he discovers that the board lights up in five distinct looping patterns. And Michael thinks if he can just memorize these patterns, he can get on the show and he can win a bunch of money. So Michael memorizes these patterns and he practices the timing at home, pausing and playing his V-Chi. and playing his VCR until he's a master at this game. Then he scrapes together all the money he can, and he buys a bus ticket to Los Angeles,

and he shows up to the casting office of Press Your Luck. And he auditions, and he meets with the producers, and sure enough, bam, they cast him. So fast forward to the day of the taping, and Michael is there on the show, and he's nervous, but he's ready to win this. Let's meet our second player, Michael Larson. How are you, Michael?

And so eventually it's Michael's turn to play. And when he finally gets his first spin on the board, it doesn't go so well. Come on, big bucks, big bucks. I'm going. He got to win. And by the time the first round ends, poor Michael, he's in last place. But it's not over yet. This is what he's been training for.

He is determined to win this money. So when his turn comes up again, he is ready this time. He gets a spin on the board and bam, he stops the light, and he wins a nice little cash prize. And an extra spin. And so he goes again, and bam, he wins again. And he continues, and he spends again and again. And he wins more and more. And soon, his winnings are over $30,000.

Now, at this point, the producers of the show, they start to get suspicious that Michael might be doing something shady. But the woman in the tech booth who's supposed to be watching to make sure people aren't cheating She can't find anything wrong with how he's playing. It seems to be pure skill So Michael just keeps going and as his winnings grow to $60,000 the producers are like yo shut it down He's winning too much but they can't because he's not technically cheating and like even the host is freaking out because not only is Michael winning he's like breaking all kinds of records At 1.33 spent, 4,000. You're up to 83,000.

And eventually, Michael cracks $100,000, which was his goal the whole time. And ultimately, he wins the whole game, winning $110,000 and a trip to the Bahamas. Not bad. Which, at the time, in 1984, he had won more money than anyone had in a single episode of any American game show ever. And the suits at CBS are not happy about this. Because they still suspect he cheated. But they can't prove anything, so they write him a big fat check and they send him on his way.

Which means his plan has officially succeeded. However, Michael isn't done. He's still determined to get rich. Like he's made getting rich his whole personality. And one day, he's listening to the radio and he hears about this contest. And in this contest, they're reading out serial numbers on $1 bill. And if you have a dollar bill that matches the number they read, you win $30,000. So Michael goes to the bank and he withdraws $50,000 of his game show winnings in $1 bills.

And then he and his wife, they sit at their house and they look through each $1 bill for anyone that matches the winning serial number. And they do this for weeks. But unfortunately, no luck. So Michael takes half the money and he puts it back in the budget. bank and the other half he just hides in random places around his house. But then, sometime later, one night, someone breaks into his place and they steal all the dollar bills he had hidden around his house. And Michael, he gets mad and he straight up blames his own wife for being involved in the

burglary. And then she gets mad at him and then she takes her kids and she just straight up leaves him. And then later he gets a new girlfriend and they start some pyramid scheme together where they get people to invest in a fake lottery and they end up scamming a bunch of people out of $3 million. So I guess he met his goal and he's finally rich now. But eventually the SEC, the FBI, and the IRS catch on to his scam and they go after him. But he goes on the run from the law and he stays on the run for a long time. In fact, they never catch him. And eventually he dies and they only find him after he died, and he died from cancer, which is unrelated to any of this, but he technically got away. So, shout out to Michael, I guess.