Lottery question?

Question

Please see the asked questions on my profile about my lottery idea. It will bring you up to speed on this.

This is my next idea....
pick your six numbers and hire me to go to florida and buy you a ticket and return it to you before the drawing. I charge $3 dollars plus the cost of your ticket.

Legal? An attorney if possible.

Answer 1

First off, why are you expecting to find an attorney on here dispensing free advice. Any attorney will charge you for information like this. If you base your legal understanding from advice from random strangers on here and get busted then you are in a world of hurt. Go and pay some money and talk to a real lawyer face to face.

As was pointed out in an earlier question you asked, this sounds like you would be enabling gambling. If you are curious about this, call the police and ask them what they think of your idea. If you believe that it is 100% legal then you should have no fear about it. If they say go ahead, I would still advice talking to a lawyer first.

One of the biggest indicators that this will not be legal is that you would be prohibited from selling tickets on Ebay. Their rules specifically ban selling lottery tickets. If it were legal to do so, Ebay would jump on that in a heartbeat. They would love to be able to charge their fees on the lottery tickets that were sold. However, they do not allow it. They spent money on lawyers.

Next up, I do not believe that there is enough business to make this worthwhile for you. The people who would be the most interested in this would want to buy lots of tickets at once. Your $3 surcharge will drive them away. If they wanted to buy 50 tickets, it would cost them $200. If they wanted to spend $50 on gas and $50 on the tickets, they would get the same deal and save $100. You may find a few people wanting to do onesies and twosies. You may even find enough people to break even or even make money once in a while, however, I do not see enough market to justify a service like this.

If the people who are your customers really want to make money, they should take that money and just buy some CDs or stocks or something. The lottery is a pretty good way to lose money. About 99% of people who play the lottery lose their money. Your service would just make them lose their money faster.