Somewhere out there someone's running a scam.

He's got a convenience store or a newsstand and over in the corner is a lottery machine. He's got a roll of ticket stock, made by a tiny factory in China to a reasonably high standard, and a PC stashed under a table, the real brains of the operation. He's had a friend hack it into the guts of an old lottery machine so it prints out tickets that look just like the real thing.

As far as scams go it's pretty smalltime. He sells a few hundred tickets a day, mostly always to the same people. For ten years he had the lottery machine in his shop, printing out tickets that he saw ten cents for every dollar he sold. He got greedy, I guess, decided that if anyone was going to make money off the locals it might as well be him. So a few thousand dollars out of pocket later he was up and running.

He's scrupulously honest. If you come in with a ticket worth a few bucks, or even a few hundred he'll pay out cheerfully. The limit is supposed to be six hundred dollars - above that and you're supposed to go to the state to collect. He hasn't had to yet but he's already made up his mind, if someone comes in with a ticket up to $2,000 he'll pay it out of his own till. But he hasn't had to.

And he checks the numbers, every drawing, real-time. He hasn't missed it once in the last two years. Checks them against a list, sorted numerically, printed off the PC under the table. He knows the odds, better than any of the players. Almost 1 in 600,000 against a $10,000 hit. That's six years of selling tickets, and after six years he'll probably have $10,000 he can spare. The grand prize is one in 145 million. He could probably hand the business down to his great-great grandchildren and still never worry about one of his customers hitting it. But just in case, if the day ever comes, he'll be gone. A suitcase in the corner of his bedroom goes in the back of his truck, let the dog run loose and find another part of the country and a new name.

It probably wouldn't be that hard to set it all up again.