The person running the raffle won the main cash prize at my son’s school
Wednesday, 12 Mar 2025
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That’s why they’re usually ineligible to participate
I once went to a raffle fund raiser for a non-profit and the 2 top cash prizes were won by the same person…who also worked there. Sure seemed suspicious.
Something like this happened when I was in primary school:
There was a teaching assistant who had 3 children across different years of the school. A local organisation had donated 3 new bikes for the raffle. Supposedly, every child in the school was entered into the raffle to have an equal chance of winning a bike (around 300 children). So we are all taken into the school hall and the head teacher picks three names ‘at random’ from the jar. Who wins, but all three of the teaching assistants children. What are the chances hey? Great way to show the competition is fixed.
They shouldn’t have been allowed to participate or they should’ve picked someone else.
Every event like this I have ever been a part of, ***no one*** participating in the setup of the raffle was allowed to participate.
They should not even be participating
Check the rules for your state but very likely they have broken the law.
[U.S. Raffle Laws by State: A Comprehensive Guide](https://www.dojiggy.com/blog/u-s-raffle-laws-by-state-a-comprehensive-guide/)
I worked for Costco for brief period in my life and went to a Christmas party they made mandatory. Had a raffle of 4 things like $1,000 cash and Week of paid vacation, nice prizes, etc. All four of the managers won the prizes. It was clearly rigged
When I was in high school, we had this senior class party where we all stayed the night at this arcade pizza place. The event was to give out prizes and money to seniors that were about to head off to college. You could win nice TVs, PlayStations, Keurig’s , iPhones, and a bunch of other cool stuff along with cash for college.
All the seniors who wanted to be put into the drawing for the prizes had to raise money doing different volunteer activities and basically help raise money for the prizes and event. Every like $10 you raised got you a ticket blah blah blah. However, some of the “popular kids” parent’s were the ones running the show and the ones “drawing the names”.
Long story short: The biggest prizes, believe or not…MAGICALLY went to all their kids.
I had almost 50 tickets….and I got a $20 gift card to Chili’s.
Mildly suspicious
My family attended a Christmas party for my husband’s local community yesterday (I’m trying to be vague and can’t figure out how else to explain it, sorry). When we entered the party, we were given 4 (non sequential) raffle tickets and informed that there would be a drawing beginning in about 30 minutes. Throughout the course of the drawing, all four of our tickets were drawn. The prizes weren’t anything great, but because my husband is one of the big bosses within the community, we were getting side-eyed like crazy. We ended up giving all the prizes away to those who hadn’t won because people were crying foul, even though we had nothing to do with the drawing and didn’t even know about the raffle prior to being given the tickets. There will always be people that ruin the fun for everyone by cheating, but there are some people that just have all the luck.
That kind of reminds me of the time in HS when I won a huge school-wide March Madness pool (back in the day where we had to do it all on paper), had been crushing EVERYONE, then after the tournament was over I’m informed by the guy running it that I “tied” with his sister, so we had to split the $1,100 pot. Definitely not suspicious
What’s that, Father McGuire? You have #11?
I went to a benefit years ago for an injured firefighter and watched as all of the big raffle prizes were won by the people at the family table. TVs, cash, electronics, sports memorabilia and tickets. One person after another from that table jumped up when their ticket was called to claim their prize.
At another “beer and beer” type benefit for a cop who lost his job after testing positive for drugs (I did not know the “why” until I got there) they had a 50/50 raffle where the winning ticket wins half of the total cash raised.
It was made clear by the organizers that it was expected that the winner would “donate” their winnings back to the cop who lost his job. Fuck that.
Reminds me of when I was in 3rd or 4th grade. Big raffle at school and 1 mom flooded the bowl with tickets for her kid sick at home. After the 8th time his name was called kids were crying or asking to go home. She pissed off a lot of families that day.
When I was in school, they had a big raffle to raise money for senior prom that year. The prize was a car. It wasn’t a great car or anything, but still, it was a car that ran and drove. I live in a poor area, so that would have been amazing for some of the kids there. The raffle was organized, and completely controlled by one particular teacher. Everyone joked that her daughter was going to win the raffle. Joke was on us though, because her daughter did win the raffle.
Always have random people from the audience pulling tickets, and anyone affiliated with the organisation of the raffle abstains from playing or redraws if they win. Without those two conditions there’s always the suspicion of funny business.
„won“
Any Father Ted heads in the house?
Years ago, I attended an event where a dealership was raffling off a four-wheeler. One of the dealership employees won. He was a mechanic, and pretty low on the organizational structure. I don’t think they cheated, but an employee should have been barred from participating.
I cochair a small employee resource group. We raffle off gift cards, books, and gift boxes pretty regularly. I have had to decline when something was raffled to me because I’M IN CHARGE OF THE FREAKING GROUP! I helped pick the prize for someone else, not myself. Such a weird way to raise morale, setting up a prize then stealing it for yourself.
The PTO at my son’s elementary school was the absolute worst. They were a clique who had been running it for a decade and wanted to involve nobody else except their friends. On graduation day, they didn’t let any other parents volunteer to set up because they had already placed their bags in the front 4 rows so nobody except their extended families could sit there. But it was a nice bit of schadenfreude to hear my son and three other children called a dozen times for awards while their kids got one or two participation prizes.
Should not be entered at all. Full stop.
Rigged
Reminds me of the big 50/50 winner
15 million payout and surprise. It was a relative of the company that did the draw.
About 35 years ago, our high school had a car for the grand prize for prom. The assistant principal’s daughter won the car.
The following year the principal’s daughter won the grand prize.
There were no more cars for grand prizes after that.
🤔
I was at an arcade and they were doing a raffle for a year of free games. A woman came running to the manager who hadnt even pulled out the winning ticket yet. Stood next to him smiling and the next thing you know, it’s her. Didn’t even try to look surprised.
That shouldn’t be allowed
This is exactly why so many competition rules exclude employees and their direct family. Even if everything is above board, the mere appearance of impropriety is a terrible look.
That reminds me of my 9th birthday.
We had a game at my birthday party where you had to guess the number of M&Ms in the jar and whoever got closest got to keep it.
My mom whispered in my ear that my guess was the closest but that it would be rude of me to keep it, so it went to someone else.
It’s funny, only now in writing this back out do I wonder if it was ruder to tell me that I was the closest instead of her just lying to me as well. I wouldn’t have known the difference.
The person running the raffle shouldn’t be eligible.
I went to Bingo at a bar, a dollar per card, winner got the pot. The caller was the bartender. She also won every. Single. Game. I only played two rounds, caught on and told her she shouldn’t play. She got mad, obviously. Nobody showed up for bingo nights and it soon became a one and done deal.
Check in case they borrowed a car from a dancing priest recently…
I was once on the holiday committee at a massive aerospace company. There were 5 of us who ran all the events, chose catering, as well as bought all the raffle prizes and ran the drawings. The raffle was ALWAYS 100% legit, we always ran it straight up every single event.
However, one year (and sadly during the Xmas party) the top 3 raffle prizes all went to plant managers who already made tons of $. We (the holiday committee) were accused for months of rigging the raffle. Me, being the youngest person on the holiday committee and one of the lowest on the company totem pole (I was a shipping clerk) at the time, pulled all my work friends aside and explained to them that this was literally just nothing more than absolute bad luck and “Why would I want the managers to win anything big at all?”. After seeing how bummed everyone was, I suggested to the holiday committee coordinator that we float the idea of managers recusing themselves from being eligible to win the BIG raffle prizes. The plant managers accepted it the same day. Might be worth putting that out there if it’s the same person next time.
I fixed a raffle once. We had the sweetest lunch lady at our college who was beloved by everyone and I made sure she won the gift card to the nice restaurant.
A guy at a place I used to work had a raffle for a new Harley Davidson Sportster. I bought one even though I didn’t want it for myself because I don’t like the Sportster’s smaller size. After 6 months or so the guy announced the winner and it was his wife. This guy had the balls to ride that motorcycle to work. He scammed us all.