Exact method by which a student wins $48 million recently is here

A group of students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used an unlikely characteristic in the Cash WinFall lottery back in 2005 to turn a profit from the game.

Unlike most lottery games, the Cash WinFall jackpot was capped at $2 million. If no one won the jackpot once it reached this high, it would be redistributed or "rolled down" into smaller prizes.

This made those smaller prizes five to 10 times bigger than they normally would be. Matching five of the six numbers drawn in Cash WinFall would typically win you $4,000, but the prize could go up to $40,000 during a rolldown week, The Tech reported.

The MIT students would buy as many tickets as possible during these special weeks after one of them came up with the idea during a school project.