How Swiss players covered every single lottery combination and won
A Swiss lottery operator, Loterie Romande, has confirmed it has paid a multi-million-franc jackpot that was temporarily withheld after an attempted “cover-every-combination” play raised internal alarms, a rare episode that has reignited questions about how modern lotteries police increasingly sophisticated play.
Talking to SiGMA News, Loterie Romande said its alert system detected abnormal betting patterns on its Joker draw game on 13 January 2025, prompting an immediate suspension of stakes on Joker across French-speaking Switzerland.
“On 13 January 2025, the Loterie Romande’s alert system detected unusual stakes on the Joker draw game,” the operator said. “The Loterie Romande reacted immediately and suspended the acceptance of stakes on the Joker game in French-speaking Switzerland.”
The bets placed before the shutdown were allowed to run. “The stakes recorded before this blocking took part normally in the draw of 15 January,” Loterie Romande said, adding that “the jackpot offered for this draw amounted to 2.9 million francs (about €3.1 million) and was won.”
What followed was an unusually public, and unusually tense, waiting game. The operator confirmed it paused payment while checks were carried out under Swiss gambling rules. “In line with its mission and legal obligations, the Loterie Romande has a duty to act as soon as doubt may exist regarding the security, transparency, or compliance of a game,” it said to SiGMA News. “As a result, the process of paying the jackpot to the player who claimed it was suspended, while the Loterie Romande carried out a number of investigations in accordance with the legal framework in force.”
A jackpot put on hold
In an article citing Swiss newspaper Tribune de Genève, Le Parisien said an organised group of Swiss lottery players won 3.1 million Swiss francs using “a foolproof technique” that ensured they would win, after turning up at kiosks with “bundles of banknotes” to place huge volumes of bets. According to Le Parisien, the group’s goal was to play every possible Joker combination; the shutdown meant they managed only “80% of the total possible combinations,” but still landed the top prize and a string of smaller ones, including “eleven tickets worth 10,000 francs”.
After the win, attention shifted to whether the way the bets had been placed complied with lottery rules and whether the operator had any legal grounds to withhold the payout. Le Parisien reported that the network behind the play insisted the method was lawful.
“It was about bulletproofing the legality of the operation, which was carried out with perfectly clean money, in order to avoid any challenge by the operator,” a source close to the network told Tribune de Genève.
That claim has now been met, indirectly, by the operator’s confirmation that the winner was entitled to the money. “All the investigations and checks carried out by the competent authorities have shown that the player who staked the winning combination on the Joker draw of 15 January 2025 is fully eligible for payment of the winnings,” Loterie Romande told SiGMA News. “The Loterie Romande therefore proceeded with payment.”
The operator also described the incident as unprecedented in its games: “This is the first time that an operation of this type has been identified on Loterie Romande games.”
Tightening controls at the kiosk
The case has put a spotlight on the practical chokepoints of lottery security: kiosks and other retail outlets that still handle a large share of bets, even as digital play grows.
Loterie Romande said it has introduced extra safeguards to prevent a repeat. “We introduced additional measures to prevent such a case from happening again in the future,” a spokesperson told SiGMA News, pointing in particular to retail technology: “This includes, in particular, measures to frame the use of QR codes at point of sale.”
The operator also defended the way it handled public communication while the investigation was underway. “The Loterie Romande informed the public quickly and in a transparent manner, making sure to explain the facts in a clear and factual way,” it said, while noting constraints around sensitive information. “Several constraints were taken into account, some information falling under the secrecy of the investigations or sensitive data.”
The wider tension is clear: lotteries depend on mass participation and retail reach, but must also prove that games cannot be gamed. Loterie Romande framed the episode as a warning about the speed of change. “From the Loterie Romande’s point of view, this event reminds us of the importance of a permanent duty of vigilance and monitoring,” it said. “It highlights the need to continually adapt control systems and monitoring measures to the evolution of playing methods and technological tools.”
Those pressures are already visible in Swiss politics. A parliamentary initiative due to be debated in Switzerland’s National Council has targeted how kiosks are paid for selling lottery products, arguing that commission-based incentives can cut against player-protection duties. Socialist MP Jessica Jaccoud has warned that retailers face a built-in contradiction. “We have on one side an extremely strong financial incentive that increases with the amount of bets placed, and on the other, an obligation to identify at-risk players and restrict their access to gambling,” she said.
Whether or not that initiative succeeds, the Joker affair has supplied a vivid example of what “vigilance” looks like in practice: alarms triggered by patterns, a product suspended mid-rush, and a jackpot frozen until regulators and investigators were satisfied.
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