[SPEAKER_00]: Back in May 1999, David Phillips and engineer living in Davis, California was strolling through his local grocery stores frozen food aisle, when he noticed a promotion on a frozen meal carton from the brand healthy choice.
[SPEAKER_00]: According to the promotion he could earn 500 air miles, which are loyalty points that can be redeemed against flights, hotels, and certain travel expenses for every 10 barcodes from healthy choice products he sent back to the company by December.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, a lot of people ignore promotions like this assuming it's not worth their time or that they'd need to spend hundreds of dollars for the returns to really be worth anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, David started doing some mental maths and realized something.
[SPEAKER_00]: If he got this right, he and his family wouldn't have to pay for another flight in their entire lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: What did he figure out?
[SPEAKER_00]: And what was he about to do next?
[SPEAKER_00]: Stay tuned as we take a deep dive into this story in many other tales of people finding legal loopholes to get on a imaginably amazing deals.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so as David was reading this frozen packet, he noticed the small print stated he could actually double the air miles he earned, wrecking up a thousand air miles for every 10 barcodes, if he posted them back by the end of the month.
[SPEAKER_00]: He wanted to fly his family to hear it for the summer and realize this could be his golden ticket.
[SPEAKER_00]: Usually participate in companies would offer a couple of air miles for every dollar spent with them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, healthy choice frozen meals were only $2 each, times that by $10, so $20 for a thousand air miles.
[SPEAKER_00]: Doesn't sound like a bad deal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Until you realize he needed at least 35,000 air miles for a domestic North American flight.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's $700 in frozen food for a single one-way flight, but David realized that her motion said it applied to any healthy choice product, so he went hunting for a cheaper option.
[SPEAKER_00]: a few hours away he found cans of healthy choice soup for only 90 cents each.
[SPEAKER_00]: Much better.
[SPEAKER_00]: He filled his card with them, but David's big plan meant he needed more.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot more.
[SPEAKER_00]: So after loading up the soup he had to do his local discount warehouse store known as Grocery Outlet, and that's where he hit the sweet mother load.
[SPEAKER_00]: Individual healthy choice putting cups for just 25 cents a piece, each with their own glorious barcode.
[SPEAKER_00]: David cleared out the whole store of pudding, but he wanted to go even further.
[SPEAKER_00]: Literally, so we asked the manager for the addresses of all the other grocery outlets stores in the area.
[SPEAKER_00]: He spent the entire weekend travelling all over the region by every last healthy choice putting cup he could get his hands on from Davis to Fresno.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even put in an order at his local store for 60 more cases, and when he returned, there were two whole palettes of putting with his name on them.
[SPEAKER_00]: The crazy chocolate dessert shabbing spree added up to an unbelievable total of 12,150 cups.
[SPEAKER_00]: Talk about putting in the hard work.
[SPEAKER_00]: But with them all taking up space in and around David's yard, if you know, the judgmental locals began to think he'd lost the blood.
[SPEAKER_00]: David, however, wasn't deterred.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, to boast about his all-he published photos of his stockpile onto the web flares website, a site dedicated to finding the very best travel deals.
[SPEAKER_00]: He wrote his posts under the username, Putting Guy, and from there an online putting legend was born.
[SPEAKER_00]: But David had one huge problem on his hands.
[SPEAKER_00]: The end of May deadline for earning double miles was fast approaching, and there was simply no way he could tear off all 12,150 bar coats and send them off in time.
[SPEAKER_00]: So David came up with another clever plan.
[SPEAKER_00]: He backed up the pudding and drove to two local food banks and the Sacramento Salvation Army.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're volunteers agreed to tear off the bar codes and exchange for the generous food donation.
[SPEAKER_00]: With all these extra helping hands David was able to collect every last barcode and post them back to healthy choice.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then all David could do was wait with baited breath.
[SPEAKER_00]: What a healthy choice caught him out on some technicality because surely this deal was too good to be true.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then a few weeks later a large package arrived in the mail from healthy choice.
[SPEAKER_00]: Inside were 2,500 and six certificates each won awarding David with 500 air miles.
[SPEAKER_00]: Any math whizzes may be able to work out that some in their heads, but don't worry.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a calculator and can tell you that that comes out to a total of 1,253,000 air miles.
[SPEAKER_00]: David split 216,000 air miles between his United Delta and Northwest accounts and posted the rest 1,37,000 air miles to his American Airlines account.
[SPEAKER_00]: and by surpassing the Million Mile Mark David gained advantage gold status with that airline and battling him to priority boarding upgrades and bonus miles for life.
[SPEAKER_00]: So taking his whole family to hear for the summer would have cost David several thousand dollars in plain tickets alone, but by buying a total of 3,150 dollars worth of putting cups instead and claiming those 1.25 million air miles,
[SPEAKER_00]: He had effectively paid for 31 trips to Europe from North America for less than $100 bird ticket.
[SPEAKER_00]: And by donating the pudding to charity, he also claimed an $815 tax ride off, meaning each of those 31 tickets only cause David Amir, $75.
[SPEAKER_00]: All that mental math paid off in the end.
[SPEAKER_00]: After buying all that pudding, David could jet-set to any sunny beach in the world for practically nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'd think after buying all that pudding that David would be sick of the stuff, but he actually kept 100 cups for himself.
[SPEAKER_00]: And though his family may have had their doubts at first, I know I would, if my wife spent $3,000 on putting over the course of a weekend, they enjoyed memorable trips to Italy, Peru, Mexico, and the East Coast of the US.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Philips family traveled so much that the pudding miles have now all been used up, so not the lifetime supply of lights he could have had, but pretty darn close.
[SPEAKER_00]: If only they had more grocery store outlets in Fresno.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the legend of putting guys still lives on an internet legend, as a classic tale of a smart guy worked out how to game the system.
[SPEAKER_00]: Man, I sure would have paid a lot more attention at math class of putting it been involved.
[SPEAKER_00]: Next up, they say New York is the city that never sleeps, probably because no one living there can afford to sleep.
[SPEAKER_00]: The average cost of rent here is a staggering 4,295 dollars per month, and that translates to roughly 77 dollars per square foot of space.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you want to know how to afford to live in Manhattan,
[SPEAKER_00]: Ask a cab driver.
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't just know the city streets like the bag of their hand, but they also know how to hack the city's bylaws.
[SPEAKER_00]: In 2015, Old Tim Geo Tour was a cab driver who received an ingenious tip of regarding one specific property law.
[SPEAKER_00]: Taking the advice, Old Tim Geo rented a room at the Chelsea Highline Hotel and then,
[SPEAKER_00]: the next day he requested a six-month lease.
[SPEAKER_00]: The hotel was registered as an SRO or single-room occupancy, which typically describes a residential building for low-income tenants.
[SPEAKER_00]: To protect these tenants from dubious landlords in New York State issued a series of laws, such as a little-known rent stabilization administrative code, which dictates that SRO occupants who
[SPEAKER_00]: Their own old Timgey had requested was officially listed for $0 a month rent, meaning he now had a rent-free room.
[SPEAKER_00]: For life!
[SPEAKER_00]: But after requesting the lease, the Huttas landlord figured out what was happening and locked out Timgey out of the room purposely preventing him from becoming a permanent tenant.
[SPEAKER_00]: To claim his room back, old Timgey had to turn to the man-hat in housing court to enforce the law.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the deciding factors ruling against the landlord was that the year before another cadre ever had applied the exact same law.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hamadu Garo had secured a permanent room for a stabilized rent of only $226 per month.
[SPEAKER_00]: Meanwhile, Hamidu's buddy Joe Stevens, another catch ever had been living in the hotel for the last 20 years for a similarly low amount.
[SPEAKER_00]: These housing laws apply to other hotels in New York as well, including the Waldorf and the Marriott Marquis, and can be enforced by anyone.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, don't expect Iraq up to any hotel in New York and be given a free room.
[SPEAKER_00]: For a hotel to be subject to the code, it must have been built on our before July 1, 1969, and contained six or more housing accommodations where rent prices at the time were established to have been less than $350 per month.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, unfortunately, a lot of New York's modern luxury hotels don't apply.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nevertheless, Old Temgy's story is proof that you should always read the fine print as you could become the hotel guest that never has to check out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yellowstone National Park is one of America's great natural beauties, but it also comes with a ton of dangers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Park Rangers will warn you about getting too close to the Grizzly Bears while scientists will warn you about the 500 active geysers across the park, which shoot boiling water up to 180 feet into the air.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's a place even more dangerous in the park known ominously as the zone of death.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why such a worrying name?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that's because it's the only place in the United States where you could legally get away with homicide.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because in this 50 square mile area, no laws apply.
[SPEAKER_00]: To understand why this legal loophole exists, first you need to know that Yellowstone National Park actually covers three states.
[SPEAKER_00]: While 96% of the park is in Wyoming, a smaller 3% section is north in Montana, and an even smaller 1% sliver is in Idaho, and that's where the zone of death is found.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the majority of the park is in Wyoming, any crimes committed in Yellowstone's boundaries are put to trial in the United States District Court for Wyoming.
[SPEAKER_00]: But for a crime to be punished, a defendant has to first be given a fair trial.
[SPEAKER_00]: The right to a fair trial is enshrined under the 6th Amendment of the United States Constitution, which decrees that juries and federal criminal cases must be made up of citizens who are from both the district and the state where the crime was committed.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the zone of death while an Idaho is complete wilderness.
[SPEAKER_00]: If a crime's committed there, there are no residents in the area to a simple adjury.
[SPEAKER_00]: Without a fair trial, no crime can be charged, so on a technicality this area is a lawless zone.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, by default, best to avoid as a camping spot.
[SPEAKER_00]: This legal loophole was discovered by Michigan State University professor Brian Colt, who was writing an essay on the Sixth Amendment and the right to a fair trial.
[SPEAKER_00]: To his horror, he discovered this glaring legal error by complete chance.
[SPEAKER_00]: He published an essay in 2005 titled The Perfect Crime as a means to alert Congress to issue legislation to fix the loophole.
[SPEAKER_00]: But so far, Congress has been slow to take any action.
[SPEAKER_00]: Luckily, it seems no crimes have been committed in the area that we know of.
[SPEAKER_00]: Though, as recently as 2022, an Idaho legislator has called for the Zone of Death Loophole to be closed, and it's a surprisingly easy fix.
[SPEAKER_00]: All legislators would have to do is re-draw the judicial districts of Yellowstone, so they fell within the state lines.
[SPEAKER_00]: The district court of Idaho would then govern over the zone of death and the loophole would disappear.
[SPEAKER_00]: But this still hasn't been implemented at the time I'm recording this, so the area remains the most dangerous place in Yellowstone.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or the best if you're a professional hitman.
[SPEAKER_00]: None of you are actually hitman, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't get to feel that I'm going to regret telling at least one of you about this.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've all heard of making it rain-dollar bills, but what about raining-dollar coins?
[SPEAKER_00]: Ouch.
[SPEAKER_00]: That would be painful.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe that's why Dollar Coins never took off, despite the American governments relentless attempts to launch them.
[SPEAKER_00]: One campaign to get the public interested in dollar coins ended up backfiring so badly people were going on free vacations instead.
[SPEAKER_00]: But before that, why is the U.S.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, quite simply, it would be a lot cheaper for them.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, it would save the U.S. government more than $500 million a year.
[SPEAKER_00]: But surely, paper is cheaper to produce than metal coins, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it actually comes down to the lifetime of money.
[SPEAKER_00]: As bills are circulated through the economy, they're wrapped up torn and damaged.
[SPEAKER_00]: Eventually, they're no longer fit for purpose and taking out of circulation to be destroyed.
[SPEAKER_00]: As a result, the Bureau of Printing has to print billions of new dollar bills every year to replace the old currency.
[SPEAKER_00]: Up to 70% printed each year used to replace notes considered to be unfit for use.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dollar coins, however, last 16 times longer than paper notes do.
[SPEAKER_00]: The lifespan of a dollar bill is around 6.6 years, but a dollar coin can last around
[SPEAKER_00]: 30 years.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the U.S. men has tried a number of methods to get the public interested in using dollar coins.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one rollout scheme launched in 2008, the men offered to sell the new dollar coins at face value with free shipping, allowing the use of credit cards to purchase the coins.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, one science researcher, Jane Liao, took note of the scheme and suddenly realized that there was a major loophole here.
[SPEAKER_00]: If she got a credit card with a high enough limit, she could, for example, purchase $10,000 coins, then deposit the coins at the bank and pay off the credit card.
[SPEAKER_00]: Usually banks offer rewards for paying back credit earlier within a certain time frame such as free air miles.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Jane and many others self-reclamed a travel hacker started buying up hundreds of dollar coins on their credit cards and earning all these air miles.
[SPEAKER_00]: The scheme completely backfired on the men's attempts to put the coins in circulation as instead they were building up in bank vaults.
[SPEAKER_00]: Metaphysios realized there was something going wrong when they discovered a small number of customers were ordering huge quantities of coins.
[SPEAKER_00]: The top 20 customers alone bought around $696,000 between them.
[SPEAKER_00]: One man reportedly ordered 2.4 million worth of the dollar coins, and none of them were entering into circulation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Eventually, by 2011, the men caught onto the scheme and sent letters to the travel hankers exploiting this loophole, imposing a strict limit of buying only 1,000 coins every 10 days.
[SPEAKER_00]: The U.S. men may have ended this clever free air miles hack, but dollar coins have never really caught on with the public.
[SPEAKER_00]: Most likely because they're heavier and bulkier in your wallet than the ease of using paper bills.
[SPEAKER_00]: Besides, it's no fun having dollar coins thrown at you when you're on stage.
[SPEAKER_00]: No wait, pretend you didn't hear that.
[SPEAKER_00]: When it comes to gambling, they say the house always wins.
[SPEAKER_00]: But sometimes Clever Gambleers can beat the house at its own game.
[SPEAKER_00]: Such as in 2010 when Gambleers using the British Columbia Lottery Corporations Play Now website discovered a loophole that reliably paid them $197.50 every time they played.
[SPEAKER_00]: As part of a promotion scheme, new players to the site would get a $100 incentive in their accounts.
[SPEAKER_00]: Players then deposited $100 of their own money into the account and played a backer at game betting $50 on both the player and the banker.
[SPEAKER_00]: And backer at their only three possible outcomes.
[SPEAKER_00]: The player's hand beats the bankers, the banker's hand beats the players or they tie, which happens very rarely.
[SPEAKER_00]: So with their bet set, they were practically guaranteed to win one of the $50 bets.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so with the winnings doubled, they won back the $4100 they put down.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then if they wagered the same bed again, they qualified to withdraw the $100 deposit bonus.
[SPEAKER_00]: After a $2.50 service charge players then walked away with their $97.50-its profit after a few minutes play.
[SPEAKER_00]: It seemed like a huge gap, but BC lottery maintained that of all the people that claimed the $100 bonus, 75% of them kept on gambling.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, they've never run that promotion again, so I wonder if that bad land of them in the red.
[SPEAKER_00]: Psst, hey, hey you, you want a golf cart for free?
[SPEAKER_00]: Back in 2008, a tax loophole meant that you could get a golf cart for free, but the catch was you couldn't call it a golf cart.
[SPEAKER_00]: Economic stimulus legislation passed at late 2008 created two new tank credits for electric vehicles, including one for four wheel low speed plug-in electric drive vehicles.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, just like a... a... rough blart.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the looms specifically said this credit did not apply to vehicles manufactured primarily for off-road use.
[SPEAKER_00]: So a golf cart designed for off-road use on a golf course was automatically disqualified.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which is why for this tax loophole to apply and had to strictly be called a neighborhood electric vehicle.
[SPEAKER_00]: The amazing thing about this credit is that it could cover up to $15,000, which was 100% of the cost of a standard golf card at the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: All you needed to do to claim the credit was to buy and take title to a qualifying golf card.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, neighborhood electric vehicle by December 2009.
[SPEAKER_00]: So providing it had a license plate, signal lights, and wing mirrors, you could drive it off down the highway for free.
[SPEAKER_00]: But even that most golf guards have a top speed of just 15 miles per hour, that it caused quite a few tailbacks.
[SPEAKER_00]: The tax loophole ended with the over in 2009, sadly, but it's always worth keeping track of these things, as you never know when you'll find us similarly... ...the horrific deal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ever since Starbucks first opened its doors in 1971, it hasn't stopped serving coffee, be it in being her beverage form.
[SPEAKER_00]: Today, some 60 million customers visit its 18,000 stores all over the world every week.
[SPEAKER_00]: As a result, Starbucks came up with a loyalty card scheme because Starbucks gold.
[SPEAKER_00]: Members were entitled to a bunch of benefits including a free drink on their birthday, free refills, and one free drink after every 12 drinks they bought.
[SPEAKER_00]: Most of us might have settled for a free filter coffee, but other customers have used this free drink to start breaking records.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now Andrew may sound like an ordinary name, but it's the name of a man who made a truly insane drink.
[SPEAKER_00]: Back in May 2014 he marched into a Starbucks and put a glass vase down on the counter, challenging the baristas to make a frappuccino, but not just any frappuccino, as 60 espresso shot frappuccino.
[SPEAKER_00]: The vanilla bean mocha mega frappuccino came in at a total of $54.75, but Andrew didn't pay a dime.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because Andrew, a Starbucks gold member, had bought 12 drinks in the days before hand.
[SPEAKER_00]: And at the time, there were no stipulations about what beverage gold members could claim.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this 128-ounce monstrosity was totally free.
[SPEAKER_00]: Though Andrew's record for the most expensive Starbucks drink didn't last long as it was beaten just two months later.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you guess where?
[SPEAKER_00]: Florida.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's always Florida.
[SPEAKER_00]: A woman set the new record at $60.58 with her drink, also featuring 60 shots of espresso, along with caramel, white moga, and hazelnut syrup.
[SPEAKER_00]: She also didn't pay for this super sized drink as she used her loyalty card and, is that a glass, keg?
[SPEAKER_00]: But the infamous Florida man reared his head shattering the record again in October when William Lewis asked for a mega-lutter that featured 101 shots of his spreso and 17 bumps of vanilla syrup.
[SPEAKER_00]: The drink totaled $83.75 but William also got the drink for free on his loyalty card.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now all these drinks may sound impressive but they could also be deadly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Kevin is a stimulant with the daily consumption limit for humans being some 400 milligrams.
[SPEAKER_00]: Meanwhile, a Starbucks espresso shot contains 75 milligrams of caffeine, so Andrews and Florida Woman's drink topped out at 4,500 milligrams of caffeine blasting 11 times past the daily limit.
[SPEAKER_00]: William's drink in the other hand, totaled 7,500 milligrams of caffeine, a literal, hard-stopping 18 times over the daily limit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Trinking these drinks all at once could trigger a lethal caffeine overdose resulting in a regular heartbeat, seizures, and even heart failure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wisely, none of these creative customers drink them in one go.
[SPEAKER_00]: Andrew finished his mammoth frappuccino over the course of five days, while you're on the other hand split his between three friends who drink it out of normal sized coffee cups, turning his one free drink into dozens.
[SPEAKER_00]: I imagine Starbucks's management was, bitter.
[SPEAKER_00]: Identical twins can sometimes be so hard to teleport to even their parent's struggle.
[SPEAKER_00]: But while their parents only have to worry about calling them their wrong name, the cops could have it much harder.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now in law, the saying goes, innocent until a proven guilty, which means in many places in order to be punished for a crime, there needs to be proof beyond reasonable doubt that the person accused committed it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Any crime show fans watching will know a deciding factor in any case his DNA evidence.
[SPEAKER_00]: But here's the kicker.
[SPEAKER_00]: Identical twins also share identical DNA.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so even DNA evidence can't prove which twin committed a specific crime.
[SPEAKER_00]: This exact legal dilemma occurred back in 2008 in Malaysia when a judge couldn't determine which identical twin owned a stash of narcotics.
[SPEAKER_00]: Therefore, by law, they both had to be acquitted because the wrongness of imprisoning an innocent person outweighs detaining a guilty person.
[SPEAKER_00]: A similar case also occurred in Arizona, U.S. back in 2011.
[SPEAKER_00]: The judge couldn't decide whether Orlando or Brandon Nampard had gotten into a fight outside a nightclub, one that ended fatally for the other person involved.
[SPEAKER_00]: Despite DNA evidence and abundant witnesses to the crime, there was no way for the prosecution to definitively pin the crime on either Orlando or Brandon.
[SPEAKER_00]: They shared the same distinguishing features identical DNA and most importantly, both blamed the crime on the other, and so they both went free.
[SPEAKER_00]: To this day, police still can't determine who committed the crime.
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess that's a twin for, sorry, a win for the twins, at least.
[SPEAKER_00]: New Yorkers spend on average up to 117 hours in traffic per year.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's equivalent to being stuck in your car for over four days.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's no wonder that most residents up for public transport instead with 2.4 million people traveling daily on the subway.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a far more convenient way to travel with people loved and taken their pets, too.
[SPEAKER_00]: But in 2019, the New York City Transit Authority put forward a rule that no animal may board trains or interstations without being carried inside a container like a portable kennel.
[SPEAKER_00]: But where there's a hard rule, New Yorkers will always find a loophole.
[SPEAKER_00]: While the rule requires pets to be inside a container, it doesn't actually define what kind of containers are valid.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so people came up with their own creative interpretations of what a container was from back-backs to laundry bags.
[SPEAKER_00]: Though the most popular trend for large dogs was to cut four holes into a plastic IKEA bag so that the air pooch could wear it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Flat pack pads are one of the easiest things to assemble.
[SPEAKER_00]: Simply put slot D into slot B, and that's a simply complete.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in accordance with the rule these IKEA dogs are contained inside the bag, though the fact no one seems faced by dogs wearing IKEA bags has a lot about how much weirdness New Yorker see every day.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of grandparents spend their well-earned retirement going on cruises are learning to knit.
[SPEAKER_00]: But one grandfather who had a serious knackford number spent his retirement gaming the lottery.
[SPEAKER_00]: Back in 2003, Jerry and March stubby were enjoying their retirement in Michigan when a new lottery game was announced known as Winfall.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the regular Mega Millions lottery, the Jackpot keeps building until one lucky person gets all the right numbers and wins the big money prize.
[SPEAKER_00]: But in Winfell, if the Jackpot reached 5 million and no-one matched all six numbers, all the money rode down to the lower tier prize winners.
[SPEAKER_00]: So anyone would tick its matching 5-4 or three numbers got a cash prize.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jerry discovered a brochure for this new lottery system at the corner store.
[SPEAKER_00]: A fast thinker, it took him all of three minutes to work out how to hack the system.
[SPEAKER_00]: Meanwhile, it takes me at least five minutes just to decide what pizza to order.
[SPEAKER_00]: But Jerry is a far smarter guy than me.
[SPEAKER_00]: He realized that if he bought $1,100 worth of tickets that statistically had at least one four-number winning ticket, which would earn him back $1,000.
[SPEAKER_00]: He crunched the number's further and realized that he'd either have 18 or 19 three number winning tickets, which would earn him $50 each.
[SPEAKER_00]: That means in total after $1,100 investment, he'd win back a $1,900 return every time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jerry's clever sums had removed the luck element from the lottery entirely.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, it was just a matter of working the odds to his favor.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when a roll down was announced, Jerry's spring into action.
[SPEAKER_00]: He bought $3,600 worth of windfall tickets and won $6,300 in return.
[SPEAKER_00]: The next time he bought $8,000 worth of tickets and nearly doubled his earnings.
[SPEAKER_00]: In 2005, Michigan State shut down the windfall lottery, but Jerry soon found a similar game called Cash Windfall and Massachusetts.
[SPEAKER_00]: Double would drive over 700 miles to buy a $100,000 worth of tickets at two local convenience stores.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a steep up front investment, but one that really paid off, because by 2009 they had grossed more than $20 million in winning tickets.
[SPEAKER_00]: After ticket expenses and taxes, this was a profit of $5 million.
[SPEAKER_00]: Eventually, though, the fun came to an end when the Boston Globe newspaper published an investigative report exposing the money-making scheme.
[SPEAKER_00]: Following that, Massachusetts State announced they would phase out the cash-wentful lottery within a year.
[SPEAKER_00]: By January 2012, Jerry and Marges went full scheme had come to an end.
[SPEAKER_00]: Over the course of 90 years, they had grossed nearly $27 million from both states, rewarding them with $7.75 million in profit before taxes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Forget going on a luxury cruise, these guys could have bought their own yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: But they instead chose to use the money for practical purposes such as helping their 6 kids, 14 grandkids and 10 great grandchildren pay for their educations.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe that's how Jerry gets so good at math, just by keeping track of his dozens of descendants.
[SPEAKER_00]: They say that everyone has a book in them and untold story they could write.
[SPEAKER_00]: But committing all those words to paper can take an age although if there's one thing that prisoners have it's a lot of time on their hands
[SPEAKER_00]: and according to one strange Romanian law, writing a book can get you out of jail.
[SPEAKER_00]: In Romania, a specific law once stipulated that prisoners could have their sentences reduced by 30 days for every scientific work they publish.
[SPEAKER_00]: In April 2015, one Romanian businessman behind bars, Jorge Copos managed to reduce his sentence by 150 days by publishing five books.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of his books was titled, Metrimonial Alliance as a policy of Romanian kings in the 14th the 16th centuries, and impressive academic work.
[SPEAKER_00]: Meanwhile, another prisoner wrote at 212 page book in only 7 hours, which blows away Steven King's record for writing his 219 page novel The Running Man in a Week.
[SPEAKER_00]: Romanian prisoners published 340 books in 2015 alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: So how on earth were these prisoners writing such well researched academic books so quickly?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, one historian Katelyn Parfine solved this mystery when he picked up George's book and discovered it completely plagiarized his master thesis.
[SPEAKER_00]: The book was a word for word copy of his entire essay.
[SPEAKER_00]: This blatant plagiarism also explained that it's seven-hour record as it's a lot easier to read quickly if you're not having to come up with an original plot.
[SPEAKER_00]: Prisoners were finding little known academic works and just copying them out, word for word hoping no one would notice.
[SPEAKER_00]: The law remained hugely controversial in Romania and was finally repealed in 2016.
[SPEAKER_00]: Unsurprisingly, prisoners now spend a lot less time in the library, as Romani is legal system has started a new chapter.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the single biggest purchases most people make in their entire life is buying a house.
[SPEAKER_00]: With prices ranging from tens of thousands to millions of dollars property in the U.S. is an expensive business.
[SPEAKER_00]: But one Texas man looked up his state laws and worked out the ultimate life hack, buying a house for only $16.
[SPEAKER_00]: to understand how first we've got the time travel back to the 2008 financial crash.
[SPEAKER_00]: Following this, some parts of America became ghost towns with some people having to abandon homes they can no longer afford the mortgage on.
[SPEAKER_00]: One man known as Kenneth Robinson found a silver lining in this property bubble bursting, then 2011 he found a house valued at $330,000 in flower amount Texas, that had been abandoned by its previous owner and the mortgage company it was tied to it shut down.
[SPEAKER_00]: With no one to claim the debt the house was just sitting empty, Kenneth had done his research on a little known long known as adverse possession.
[SPEAKER_00]: whereby if someone were to move into an abandoned home they would have exclusive negotiating rights with the original owner.
[SPEAKER_00]: If the original owner wanted the squatter to leave the owner would have to pay off the mortgage on the property and under Texas occupancy laws the bank would have to file a lawsuit against the squatter to get him evicted.
[SPEAKER_00]: All Kenneth had to do was file paperwork at the local courthouse saying he claimed ownership of the property which cost him a grand total of $16.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then as long as he stayed for three years, the house would be his.
[SPEAKER_00]: To advertise the loophole to others, Kenneth created a website known as $16.com and became a local celebrity.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he remained deeply unpopular with his neighbors who found he should have to pay fair and square for the house.
[SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately, Kath was only able to live in the house for eight months before Judge ruled that the current holder of the mortgage bank of America could have evicted him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because Kenneth had boasted about the Luposo publicly, the judge decided to make an example of him, cracking down quickly to dissuade anyone else thinking about taking advantage of the scheme.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nevertheless, the law of adverse possessions still applies, so you can feasibly claim ownership of an abandoned home.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just don't make the same mistake as Kenneth and brag about it on the internet.
[SPEAKER_00]: They say that America is the land of the free, perhaps on some states it's a little too free.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because in the state of Kansas, for example, it's perfectly legal to stroll down the street in your birthday suit.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's long as you keep your hands where we can see them.
[SPEAKER_00]: In a 90-behavior will obviously constitute a criminal offense, but just walking around with no clothes on?
[SPEAKER_00]: No problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: But don't take the same chance, though, and North Carolina, because their public nudity is illegal.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you do want to let it all hang out in North Carolina, there is a way around that.
[SPEAKER_00]: This day's laws preserve the right to do whatever you want on your property.
[SPEAKER_00]: That means you may not be able to walk around the street with your bonds out, but if you're standing in your doorway completely nude or in the backyard with nothing on, no one can arrest you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Though I'd recommend a can't sit for the bug bites alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which of these crazy loopholes did you find the most interesting?
[SPEAKER_00]: And do you know of any clever ways to get around certain rules?
[SPEAKER_00]: Legally, obviously.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for listening.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a crappy paste.