Let's roll out the welcome mat.

Next week, he'll begin the task of hiring 200 to 300 employees and trying to earn a $50,000 bonus by launching scratch-off tickets by April. Our participation in the mother lode national games should begin in the summer.

Shaheen has a big job ahead of him. And he'd better go about it carefully.

In particular, I'd advise against jackpot references to the Antichrist.

Let me explain.

One of the benefits of being one of the last states to adopt a lottery is that we can learn from other states' mistakes.

Heaven forbid, for example, that we'd ever allow a company competing for the big lottery contract to help write the legislation. Never! And imagine us appointing a lottery commissioner who's received $42,000 in pay from one of the lottery companies in competition for the games. How absurd!

So of course we'd never ever find ourselves mired in scandal over outright lottery fraud.

Ahem. The latter is what happened in Pennsylvania, 25 years ago. When it comes to lessons, this one's a doozy.

The date was April 24, 1980; $3.5 million was paid out in the biggest lottery jackpot in that state's history.

The winning number: 666.

Spooky coincidence?

Nope. What looked too weird to be true was, in fact, too weird. The game had been rigged.

As the headline in the Philadelphia Daily News put it: "6-6-6 is a fix-fix-fix."

I love tabloids.

In all, six people were indicted for fixing the Pennsylvania state lottery that year.

A year later, Daily Number television show host Nick Perry -- the guy who watched the pingpong balls fall into place and announced the results with enthusiasm -- and a state lottery official were convicted.

Their scheme was ingenious (though, with the 666, it's hard to imagine how in the devil they expected not to get caught).

Liquid was injected into most of the pingpong balls in the lottery machine so that the ones most likely to pop to the surface and turn up winners were the lighter, noninjected balls -- in this case, fours and sixes.

The people in on the scam were said to have purchased more than $1 million worth of winning tickets.

Still more proof that temptation is often hard to resist.

Funny thing is, even in the midst of the investigation and trials, spanning 14 months, participation in the Pennsylvania lottery didn't decline one bit.

I know that must make Lottery Commission chairman Charles Sanders and Gov. Mike Easley smile. They keep saying the current scandals here will have no effect on the setup of the N.C. lottery.

Maybe they're right.

But here's the real kicker. Thirteen months after the fix-fix-fix, the winning lottery number was: 777.

Heaven-heaven-heaven.

And that was on the up and up.

I don't plan to waste my money on the lottery when the balls start popping here next year. But based on what I've seen so far, it sure will be fun to watch.