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Lottery winner can seek bigger prize at trial, judge rulesNews Story
Lucky Larry may have a shot to win millions more this time from a jury. A judge has ordered a trial in a lawsuit filed by Iowa lottery winner Larry Dawson, who contends a $9 million jackpot that he won in 2011 should have been nearly three times as big. Dawson filed his lawsuit in 2016 after an investigation revealed that lottery contractor Eddie Tipton rigged the previous $16.5 million jackpot, bought the winning ticket himself and unsuccessfully worked with associates to claim it. Da
May 17, 2019, 12:01 pm - Lottery News

Lottery-scamming brothers avoid asset seizures by transferring property to their motherNews Story
By Jason Clayworth Two brothers who were behind the largest lottery scam in U.S. history and owe more than $2.3 million in unpaid restitution and court fees recently transferred several properties they owned to their mother. The transfers from Eddie and Tommy Tipton have raised further questions about why four states Oklahoma, Kansas, Wisconsin and Colorado have yet to seize their properties. It has been about two years since the brothers admitted their role in a scam that hijacked lott
Apr 29, 2019, 9:50 pm - Lottery News

Colorado man who unwittingly split a $4.8M jackpot with scammer is fighting the Colorado LotteryNews Story
In 2005, three people won a Colorado Lotto jackpot worth $4.8 million, and Boulder's Amir Massihzadeh held one set of winning numbers. He accepted his prize of $568,990 after splitting the pot and paying taxes and moved on with life. Ten years later, Colorado Bureau of Investigation agents visited Massihzadeh to interview him about his winning number because they were investigating a criminal scheme to rig lotteries. They suspected the other two ticket-holders who split the prize with Mass
Apr 15, 2019, 10:14 am - Lottery News

Former security chief grilled by CT Lottery lawyer at hearingNews Story
Fallout from 2018 botched raffle draw continues A hearing on an ex-lottery official's whistleblower complaint grew heated Wednesday over the question of why a Connecticut Lottery Corp. drawing team entered the wrong numbers into a computerized random number generator on Jan. 1, 2018, in a million-dollar blunder that required a do-over drawing two weeks later and has never stopped causing trouble since. Wednesday's heat arose from lottery lawyer Jim Shea's cross-examination of Alfred DuPuis
Apr 4, 2019, 10:32 am - Lottery News

Identical winning numbers crop up in hundreds of U.S. lotteries. Are the drawings really random?News Story
By Jason Clayworth America's popular and lucrative lottery drawings, in which computers randomly select numbers that turn a lucky few into instant millionaires, may not be as random as they seem. In dozens of the games across the United States, identical winning numbers have been generated within weeks or months of each other sometimes in consecutive drawings, a Des Moines Register investigation shows. Lottery officials, even some who have previously acknowledged concern with the nation
Jan 31, 2019, 11:49 am - Lottery News

Iowa lottery lawsuit granted class action, affecting 7.2 million tickets in 19 statesNews Story
By Jason Clayworth A judge has granted class-action status in a lawsuit that claims people who purchased at least 7.2 million lottery tickets in 19 states were scammed by a former national lottery IT director who worked in Iowa. Eddie Tipton, the former IT director for the Multi-State Lottery Association in Urbandale, added a secret code to random number-generating computer software in 2005 that allowed him to narrow the drawing's winning odds from as great as 5 million to 1 down to 200 to
Jan 28, 2019, 10:24 am - Lottery News

Lawyers seek to depose lottery fraud mastermind in prisonNews Story
Lawyers pursuing a class-action lawsuit on behalf of lottery customers nationwide are seeking to interview the jailed insider who allegedly rigged jackpots for himself and others for years. The lawyers said in a court filing Friday they want to take the deposition of Eddie Tipton at the prison in Clarinda, Iowa, to gather information for their case against the Multi-State Lottery Association. Judge Michael Huppert recently granted class-action status to the case, which involves customers w
Jan 21, 2019, 8:50 pm - Lottery News

Investigation finds lottery scamming Tipton brothers have repaid virtually nothingNews Story
By Jason Clayworth and Rachel Denny Clow Two brothers who spearheaded the biggest lottery scam in U.S. history have repaid less than $1,400 in restitution despite owning property worth nearly $2 million, a Des Moines Register and Corpus Christi Caller Times investigation has found. Between them, Eddie and Tommy Tipton have admitted rigging winning drawings in at least five states, including Iowa, worth a combined $24 million. But they have barely made a dent in the more than $2.4 millio
Dec 27, 2018, 8:52 am - Lottery News

New CT lottery chief draws flak over his response to auditors' report on Jan. 1 drawing disasterNews Story
The Connecticut Lottery Corp.'s new president and CEO, Gregory Smith, was hired this past July amid hopes of a fresh start for the agency that was hit by a million-dollar mistake in a Jan. 1 drawing, after enduring two years of turmoil following a fraud scandal that shut down the 5 Card Cash game in 2015. But Smith has quickly been drawn into a controversy stemming from those very same problems after writing a letter to two key state legislators in which he defended the lottery agency for act
Nov 26, 2018, 7:45 pm - Lottery News

China lottery corruption probe sparks online outrageNews Story
China's government is attempting to downplay social media rumors that lottery administrators have embezzled nearly $20 billion from lottery proceeds. On Tuesday, the South China Morning Post reported on the frantic efforts by Beijing authorities to refute social media chatter that around RMB136b (US$19.5b) had been embezzled by corrupt lottery administrators. A popular meme blames this corruption for the inability of the average citizen to win a sizable lottery prize. The meme has its orig
Nov 14, 2018, 9:41 am - Lottery News