Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - He Stole So Much Money // The Nick Perry Lottery Scandal

Episode Date: April 28, 2026

The Nick Perry lottery scandal, famously known as the "Triple Six Fix," was a 1980 scheme to rig the Pennsylvania Lottery’s "Daily Number". Orchestrated by beloved local TV host Nick Perry, the plan involved injecting white latex paint into all but the number 4 and 6 ping-pong balls used in the drawing, making the weighted balls too heavy to be sucked into the machine’s chute.

You know that bingo scam in Better Call Saul where he tamperes with the balls? Well, that is actually based on a lottery scam that happened in real life. Now, this story all starts with this guy, his name's Nick. And Nick is about 61 when all this begins, and he's living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And Nick is locally famous in the Pittsburgh area because he's been working as a host in TV and radio for years. And he's always on camera or on air. Everyone's heard of Nick. And one day in 1977, he's working at a TV station in Pittsburgh when the state of Pennsylvania launches its daily lottery.

And the TV station he works for wins the broadcasting rights to the daily drawing, where they pick the numbers, so the station managers decide Nick is the perfect guy to host the show. So then, every night, Nick comes on TV in front of these three machines that have numbered ping pong balls bouncing around in them, and when the winning balls are chosen, Nick, reads them aloud. And then some random citizen wins a bunch of money. And this is a great gig for him. Like it's easy and he gets paid to be on TV. And about three years go by. And it's now 1980. And Nick is still working his daily drawing gig. But at this point, he started looking at this lottery business going, I feel like I should get some of these winnings too. So Nick starts really studying the whole

system of the lottery and the security measures surrounding it, and eventually he starts to see some massive holes in the whole operation. And that is when he comes up with a plan to get some of that lottery money. First, he starts up a friendship with one of the state lottery security officers, the guy whose job it is to guard the balls and the machines every night. And at one point, they're hanging out and chatting, and Nick tells this guy that the lottery could easily be rigged if he could only get access to the storage room. And this security guard agrees to be part of Nick's scam and give him access to the storage room when he needs it.

Then Nick recruits the art director at the station to help him because he needs someone who can recreate the lottery balls. So this art director guy recreates the lottery balls and he gets a syringe and he injects a tiny amount of latex paint into most of them, which is exactly what Jimmy did on Better Call Saul. This makes it so that these specific numbers will be too heavy to rise to the top of the shoot and won't be chosen as the winning number.

So now that those pieces are in place, Nick, of course, has to buy some lottery tickets. But here's the thing. He can't just go out and buy a bunch of tickets himself? I mean, how scandalous would that look if the guy who draws the lottery numbers was the same guy who won the lottery? I mean, people would riot. So Nick hits up two goons to help him out. Two guys he's been friends with since they were kids.

We'll call them the brothers, because they're two guys are actually brothers. So Nick meets up with the brothers at a local church, because I guess planning a crime at a church won't look suspicious. Anyway, so they meet and Nick is like, Hey, I'm trying to scam the lottery. Do you want to buy a bunch of tickets for me? And the brothers are like, all right, all right. Then these brothers go out and they start hitting up stores

and other places and buying lottery tickets. Then they hit up more places. more places and more places and more places until they've traveled across the whole state and they've bought more than 14,000 tickets, all for a dollar each. So like $14,000 worth of lottery tickets. And each $1 ticket has the opportunity to win $500, so they could potentially win millions from this. And so finally, the big moment comes, the day of the drawing. And at the news station, Nick recruits a stagehand who works there to sneak around and swap out the real lottery balls with the heavier imposter balls that he had the art director make.

So now it's finally showtime and the real scam begins. Now normally the news station will select a random senior citizen from the local old folks home to assist with the choosing of the numbers. The senior citizen will come and they'll remove the cap from the top of each machine. I don't know why they do it this way, but they do. So anyway, they bring this older woman up to the machines and she pulls off the cap and boom, the machine catches the winning ball. It's a six. Then she does the next machine and boom, it's also a six.

Then the third machine, boom, also a six. So the winning number is actually 666. Not because of any like demonic satanic hocus pocus, but because six was one of the only numbers Nick didn't have the guy inject with latex. so the number six balls would automatically float up to the top. And so Nick and the brothers, they planned for this to happen. They knew the odds of getting sixes were high. So of the 14,000 tickets the brothers bought, 2,400 of those were winners because the brothers had chosen 666,

which brings the winning total to $1.2 million in 1977, which is close to $5 million in today's money. So these guys' plan worked flawlessly. And within the next few days, the brothers, they go back to some of the stores where they bought these tickets and they start cashing them in. With each ticket being worth $500. So they collect a bit of money that way. But the majority of the winnings they have to go and collect from the lottery commission. And once they end up doing that, these three guys are going to have more money than they've ever had in their lives.

Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa, whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flame thrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk. Habaniero? More like habanier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. Until Here's the thing that Nick actually doesn't know about When the brothers were driving around the state buying up all those lottery tickets

They also placed a few bets on the side See in Pennsylvania at the time There was actually an underground illegal lottery Referred to as the street lottery Based on the same winning numbers But run by some mob-affiliated kingpin And so the brothers go and they place three thousand dollars were the bets on the street lottery with a few different

underground bookies later once the winning lotto number was drawn the brothers obviously won a lot of those bets and so some of those bookies start getting real suspicious like maybe the brothers are trying to pull a fast one now from these illegal side bets the brothers won a total of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for themselves and one bookie pays them thirty thousand dollars from their winnings but the rest of the bookies They know something shady was going down, and they feel like they've been scammed. So they refused to pay them anything.

Then one of these bookie guys tips off a local reporter saying that the state lottery might have been rigged. So this reporter investigates, and they publish a new story about these allegations, and like really quickly, the governor of Pennsylvania orders an official investigation. And so the Pennsylvania state police get involved, and they look over all the records, and they soon discover two guys that bought 14,000 tickets with 2,400 of them being winners. And so, bam, both the brothers get arrested. Here's one of their mugshots. And I actually couldn't find a mugshot for the other brother.

And so police questioned the brothers, and pretty quickly, they flip on Nick. And so, bam, Nick is arrested. Here's his mugshot. We will pursue vigorously any person in the future who attempts in a similar way, to rip off this vital source of support for our older Pennsylvanians. And ultimately, the brothers, they get no prison time because they flipped, while Nick actually goes to trial and he's found guilty and he gets sentenced to three to seven years in prison.