Michael Larson
The Press Your Luck scandal was contestant Michael Larson's 1984 record-breaking win of $110,237 (equivalent to $341,622 in 2025) on the American game show Press Your Luck.
An Ohio man with a penchant for get-rich-quick schemes, Larson studied the game show and discovered that its ostensibly randomized game board was actually only five different patterns of lights. After successfully auditioning in person at the Los Angeles studio, Larson performed on May 19, 1984, and played so successfully, CBS executives accused him of cheating. However, no evidence of cheating could be found and Larson was awarded his winnings.
After the network paid, Larson moved on to other endeavors. In 1995, he fled a law-enforcement investigation of a fraudulent multi-level marketing scheme and died in hiding in 1999 in Apopka, Florida. A recurring subject of interest and inspiration, the Press Your Luck scandal has been revisited in two documentaries by Game Show Network, a Spanish-language graphic novel, and the 2024 film The Luckiest Man in America, starring Paul Walter Hauser as Larson.
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