The truth is simply that I am appalled by this crime and even more appalled that very few people on this forum seem to have the reading comprehension to see that it does not match Mr. Vleisides' description in the least.
Have you considered the possibility that most of the people read the first few posts describing the situation, read Sonny's reply, made up their own mind, and are simply keeping quiet, because, aside from the initial investigation documents and Sonny's reply,
there is absolutely nothing more to add other than baseless speculations? Have you considered that everyone here IS actually as smart as you, figured all the things you mentioned on their own already, and aside from the factual info already given, most people just don't give a crap?
This pretty much describes me. I don't feel like I have anything else to add that isn't here already. There are definitely still inconsistencies between the official government documents and Sonny's account of things. Some of the discrepancies would be cleared up if I saw an example of the letters he was sending out to people/victims, but so far I haven't been able to find any of them. I'm sympathetic to the fact that the government can and does occasionally lie on court documents and trump up charges. However, there are real scammers out there and they will lie to you too.
One thing I think people should consider is that it sounds like if there was any legitimacy to the lotto "scam"/ponzi at all, then Sonny and company did nothing that the governments running lotteries don't already do as far as winning/losing goes. Selling what are essentially derivatives on lottery products is an interesting idea, but you'd have to be stupid to buy into that as a way to make money since lotteries are designed so that people lose money on them. Were stupid people victimized? Probably, but possibly no more (or not much more) than they are already victimized by government-sanctioned lotteries. Was the scam (or "scam") something I'd consider moral? Almost certainly not. Was the scam something I think should be illegal? I don't know enough about it to judge it yet.