This guy Tipton sure gets around. Good luck with the lawsuit.

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My Pie Master,

Yes indeed.  I agree. Plus, I like reading your posts, so I can look at your avatar and dream.  I dream one day that pile of loot will be mine, and I can stuff my pockets with as much of that paper loot as they can hold.

I dream of walking down the street one day - and everyone will see me and say
"There goes Charlie Potatoes.  . . . . ". and the like.   (see the move: "The Defiant Ones")

Mr. Groppo

I was wondering how long It would take before this happened!

Glad they finally filed a Lawsuit and I really HOPE THEY WIN.

GOOD LUCK!

Win big.   It depends on the courts,  prosecutor and defense team.   They will have to work out a plea agreement. 

It's just like pharmacutical companies.   My dad passed away last Feb from heart attack.  He was diabetic.  He took pradaxa as that medicine was advertised for a major lawsuit.  Now the companies have backup funds for I believe $660 million dollars.  I and my mom are hoping to recover and receive at least close to half million dollars. 

It all depends what is in the settlement and hopefully this person doesn't file bankruptcy.

By trying to prove Tipton rigged the drawings, the lotteries involved are proving they indirectly cheated players. But for repaying the players, it's really not much different than when the TN Lottery's RNG was programmed for no repeat digits in their pick-3 and pick-4 games. The players that didn't throw away their tickets, were given an equal value ticket in future drawings.

The problem here is who keeps losing lottery tickets for over years?

I can't find the "seven year" rule, but it could apply to keeping records of losses for the years the losses are claimed on Schedule A. I'm not sure if you can claim losses from up to seven years ago.

My understanding is the IRS says to keep returns for seven years in case of an audit.  As for gambling (casinos) you get a win/loss statement from the respective casino and write off any winnings, within reason, through the losses you incurred.  Don't give them any red flags to signal an audit.

How did the lottery cheat anyone?  Tipton knowing the results before the drawing gave him an unfair advantage but didn't prevent other players playing the winning combination.  If players with tickets for that game get their money back they will be lucky considering players who won smaller prizes won't be expected to pay back their winnings.

Facts are the jackpot was never collected and unclaimed jackpots have never  been paid out to players of future games.

It's the class action craze. Get everyone in on the big money then split it so many ways, you're embarrassed to admit you
even participated.
There should be a law against lawyers making out on lawsuits like these.

Here's to hoping this lawsuit gets tossed or the award is zero. Tipton may have guaranteed himself a win but he didn't deny a win to anyone else. This guy's chance of hitting the winning numbers was no greater or worse than at any other draw.

If even one non-Titpton associate won even one dollar on any of these drawings, then the claim he had zero chance of winning doesn't hold up. 

Had the lawsuit been filed on the grounds that the numbers were NOT randomly generated as they are required to be, THEN I'd agree with filing for compensation. That's a claim that makes sense and can pass the sniff test.

If the numbers aren't randomly generated or randomly drawn, then a win or non-win can't be counted as accurate. All results are therefore void. But this lawsuit is only looking at one aspect of voiding the results. One can't claim a loss shouldn't count as a loss for a particular drawing because of fraud, without also acknowledging that a win can't count as a win. 

Stating that Tipton's rigged drawings zeroed out the results for everyone who played on those dates and lost means that the people who won non-jackpot prizes can be asked to return their winnings. There's already a parallel legal precedent to do so in financial fraud cases.

 Teddi. In fact this is a no brainier *for me.When Tipton rigged it, he did not do so in a manner that precluded anyone else from having the winning numbers for that particular drawing as well. As with any jackpot, if you did not pick the correct numbers, it's your fault- no one else's.

"How did the lottery cheat anyone?"

That's the question the defense will be asking, and the plaintiff will need to have a compelling answer. That a crime causes harm to people besides the primary target doesn't make the target responsible for the injury to others unless the target somehow contributes to those injuries. I'll happily agree that the lottery's security protocols were seriously deficient, but they allowed Tipton to (presumably) take advantage rather than causing him to take advantage.

"unclaimed jackpots have never  been paid out to players of future games."

The rigged game didn't have an unclaimed jackpot. It had a jackpot that was never won. The rules for Hot Lotto clearly say that jackpots that aren't won are supposed to be rolled over and paid to the winner(s) of the first future game that sells a valid winning ticket(s).

"Tipton may have guaranteed himself a win but he didn't deny a win to anyone else."

Of course he did. Given the odds of the game it's a virtual certainty that some other combination would have been drawn if he hadn't rigged it to draw the combination he chose. He didn't do anything that prevented others from playing the combination that he caused to be drawn, but every single person who played a different combination had zero chance of winning the jackpot. Depending on the individual numbers they played their chances of winning a smaller prize would also have been reduced or eliminated. At the very least thousands of small prizes would have gone to different players, and there's a chance that the major prizes would also have been won by other players.

This seems like a clear cut win for the plantiffs.

Perhaps the lawsuit should have asked the court to force MUSL to put the amount of money taken out of the jackpot for the bogus win to be put back in the jackpot and once again give players a chance to win it.

The jackpot should not have reset to $1,000,000 if it was won in an illegal way. The $16,000,000 needs to be put back in.

That sounds sensible and altruistic, but keep in mind that MUSL is little more than a billion dollar charity. Profits/excesses are supposed to go to the states to pay for things like roads, schools, elder care, police vehicles, fire trucks. Things the residents desperately need to keep funded. MUSL shortfalls put states in budgetary crises. I have no idea where Hot Lotto funds go, but chances are it gets put to something you or a loved one rely on. 

It sounds fine to say the $16M should have gone back into the pot, but you no one knew what was going on until long after it happened. That money was probably long since earmarked. Taking it back just to prop up the jackpot would have created an unnecessary financial issue for the state. Millions go unclaimed and therefore unpaid every year. None of it ever goes back into the pot.

Glad to see someone has common and practical sense. Don't know if it's a lack of education or the inability to understand statistics, but the only way for a zero chance of winning to hold water is if no one else could win. Even then, manual picks would still be able to win the jackpot, so while a claim might be made for a reduced chance of winning, the probability of a jackpot win was never at zero. People just need to pull up their big boy pants and move along and that includes the guy suing Hot Lotto. We all know why the lawyers are willing to move forward, but this guy has WAY too much time on his hands.

An ability to reason is even more useful than common sense, and anyone capable of that should easily understand that when you buy a lottery ticket your chances of winning are based on the chances that some or all of the numbers you played will be selected in the drawing. If some or all of your numbers aren't even included in the drawing process then your chances of winning are obviously reduced.  If even one of your numbers isn't included then your chance of matching all of the winning numbers and winning the jackpot is exactly zero.

Removing numbers from the drawing process is exactly what Tipton did. People bought tickets and selected numbers that they believed would be part of the drawing, but 42 of the 47 numbers they thought had a chance of being drawn were never in the running and had zero chance of being selected. 18 of the 19 Hot ball numbers they though had a chance of being selected weren't part of the drawing. Tipton eliminated any possibility of those 42+18 numbers  being drawn before most people even bought their tickets, so instead of buying tickets that had a known chance of winning the overwhelming majority of people bought tickets that never had any chance at all.

The lottery "indirectly" cheated the players if it's a fact Tipton rigged the drawing because they sold millions of tickets with a zero chance of winning the jackpot.

"Facts are the jackpot was never collected and unclaimed jackpots have never  been paid out to players of future games."

It's more like the jackpot was never paid because the Lottery wanted to talk to the person who purchased the ticket. The Ohio Lottery said their tickets are a bearer note, which means whoever turns in a valid ticket is legally entitled to the winnings so Tipton may have got away with it had he rigged a Ohio Lottery drawing.

I don't blame them hopefully they will switch to live drawing instead of computerized....