This should prove to be very interesting.  Perhaps it will lead to the demise of RNG's once and for all.  At least we can hope it will.

Conspiracy to try and keep the other part of the winnings? Wow, and they didn't even give the guy the money he earned?

I won the extra chance drawing for $25.00 in VA and they never sent it. Called three times and they assured it was fixed and on the way. Nope! Still haven't got it. Amazing how even the winners have to fight for their due payout.

Put it up on twitter and # to the Virginia lottery. You will get your money.

I think the guy has a good chance. I hope he wins.

l seriously wanted to say something else, but in all fairness..

I hope he wins against Goliath.  Some of these corporations and not necessarily lotteries need to be held accountable for their actions or lack thereof.

I hope it does end use of RNG's.   I also hope Amir Massihzadeh prevails in court and is paid all he's seeking.

The two State agents who spoke to Massih, may have given him the impression that Tipton was going to fork over the rest of the jackpot to him. Now that it has not come to pass, they going after the establishment itself. That's pretty difficult, given the fact that it would be assumed that the lottery KNEW in advance what Tipton was doing. It's a shot in the dark at the lottery, nothing more, nothing less. Massih's lawsuit is attempting to make the Lottery a co conspirator. 

There are no claims that the lottery was a co-conspirator.  He seems to be alluding to a but for... causation standard. And let's be honest, Tipton's cheating went on for a long time so they should have caught him earlier. The lottery did not exercise the level of care they should have so they are negligent.

You can't be serious A. The only reason Tippy got caught was because he and his posse got greedy & careless. If not for their foolishness, these guys would still be going on about their business today. No one apart from his close knit crew knew what he was doing, blaming the lottery is a swallow view. There are thousands of unsolved Cold cases out there, are we to go about blaming the police departments for not "exercising the level of care" to bring these criminals to justice? 

Stop trying to turn this into a political issue. No one referenced police departments or cold cases and you are comparing apples to oranges. Your posts sure get deleted a lot...lol.

Look back at the prior stories posted by Todd. The lottery investigation caught up with Tipton at some point but should have figured it out earlier. All entities are subject to exercising a standard of ordinary care. This is a basic premise of any legal system. This does not require an allegation that the lottery was a co-conspirator.

That's because I am not insecure. l am not a report monkey either.For the life of me, l can't recall those famous words of Nathan R Jessup.

Lol. Todd establishes the rules for this site. And there you go with your name calling.  Such an unhappy fellow.

I like "report monkeys" as you call them, because they are my assistants in finding abusive people posting on the forums.

Please stop with the off-topic discussion here.

The Iowa Lottery already proved in court their employee, Eddie Tipton rigged several drawings so the only question a jury must decide is if the lottery is responsible for the actions of their employees.

If a UPS driver deliberately runs over a pedestrian UPS my be financially responsible as the owner of the delivery truck, but they're probably not responsible for the driver's actions in any other sense, so long as they had no indication that the driver might do such a thing.  Tipton was taking advantage of his job, not doing his job, when he installed whatever code allowed him to know what numbers would be generated. As such I don't see the lottery as being responsible for what he he did, and unlike the owner of a vehicle I see no automatic liability simply because Tipton was an employee.

I think the relevant issue is what the lottery did or didn't do, and I think it's pretty clear that the lottery didn't do an adequate job of ensuring that the games that they portray as fair and random really were. They clearly didn't have a security protocol that was good enough to prevent one rogue employee from manipulating the system, and they didn't have a security protocol that allowed them to discover manipulation that went on for several years. As a result a small group of winners weren't awarded the prizes that they would have won if the lottery had actually provided that fair and random game those players thought they were playing. That's the reason that I think those players should get the higher prizes they would have already collected if Tipton's scheme hadn't siphoned off a significant portion of the prizes. In addition to the legal argument this seems to be a case where standing behind your product requires stepping up and taking care of that small group of customers. Relative to the amount of profit the lotteries made the amount in dispute is a trifling pittance that won't have a meaningful effect on the bottom line.

As for the class action lawsuit by a bunch of losing players, I'm inclined to think that they don't have a decent argument. If Tipton's code simply allowed him to "predict" the winning numbers, which seems to be what the lawsuit alleges, then the amount won by individual tickets was affected but the winning numbers weren't. Unless the code actually influenced what numbers were generated those numbers were still chosen randomly and all players had exactly the same chances of winning they would have if Tipton hadn't done anything

 w/ 95% of your post Floyd. The gray area for me is this bit" They clearly didn't have a security protocol that was good enough.." The lottery could argue that this kind of thing had never happened before. This was plainly uncharted territory for lotteries nationwide. I say the lottery has a case, it's no wonder they refused to listen to Massih's attorney. It's gonna be quite a ride.

Hold onto your hat.

"this kind of thing had never happened before."

They can argue that the moon is made of green cheese, too, but it's not about whether or not it had ever happened previously. It's about whether or not it was foreseeable, whether or not the lottery promoted and/or has an obligation to run games that are fair, and whether or not they took adequate precautions to ensure that the games were fair. And arguably, it did happen previously. AFAIK there was never a deliberate compromise of RNG code, but lottery employees have made successful (though they were later caught) efforts to thwart security protocols in order to gain an unfair advantage on multiple occasions.

Don't think he has much of a shot.  They may come back and say the entire drawing was actually invalid due to the rigging, and that the guy's original winnings weren't even payable, and even move to try to recover those from him.  I mean, that would be extreme, but I wouldn't be surprised, as it would serve to discourage players from attempting similar lawsuits, as I'm sure a plethora of additional are incoming from the Tipton mess...

Foreseeable?

When l wrote " never happened before " l meant with success!" Others may have tried, and still do. But, Tippy was successful in his endeavor by thoroughly comprising the code.That, is the relative point being discussed here Floyd. But hey , l hear you.

You may be onto something there. The lottery could argue that according to the powers that be " all was well" until Tippy planted his route kit. His houdini trick disrupted the process from time to time.They could argue that putting himself in that "hot box"  was part of his job.

When all is said and done - Missah did get paid from a corrupt draw. So what's he's problem....they could argue .

If he wins this what's to stop all players who played on these specific dates from a Class Action against the lottery for a refund on the specific dates in which the game was manipulated?  He has a valid arugment, but as it's stated above the game was rigged on this date and he shouldn't really have won....  Should he have to return the money he won?  :)

In every situation where someone gets caught we should always look at the opposite side.

Right, IMO he should really leave well enough alone.  The ONLY reason you won was because some criminal rigged the drawing to happen to pick your numbers, and now you want the rest of the money from the fruit of that poison tree?  It actually makes no sense at all.  There's no way he gets anything additional, and I actually think his argument is not at all valid, from a purely logic point of view.

l can see MIssah showing up at the lottery, and thanking them for sending the two agents to let him know,that the other two "winners" were disqualified because they were part of an elaborate scheme. I can also see him asking them for the other portion of the jackpot and them telling him. " Due to transparency, we are under obligation to let you know what transpired, however we cannot give you the money because the whole draw was corrupted." Perhaps those were fighting words, and it's no wonder that he got himself a lawyer.Instead of MIssah going after Tipton, him & his attorney have now turned their focus on the lottery itself.

Desperate times calls for desperate measures.

Most lotteries have rules about when there are multiple winners and a jackpot winning ticket or two goes unclaimed, but this situation might be difference because the this lottery found out these winning tickets were part of a rigging the drawing. Couple that with the fact Tipton warned the lottery 11 years ago about a glitch, a jury might find for Amir Massihzadeh.