[vox_mundi]

Jackpot-Fixing Investigation Expands to More State Lotteries

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')The allegations read like a movie plot: a lottery industry insider installs an undetectable software program in the computers that pick winning numbers so he can know them in advance. He enlists accomplices to play those numbers and collect the jackpots. And they enrich themselves for years until a misstep unravels their high-tech scheme.

Eddie Tipton, former security director of the Multi-State Lottery Association, has been accused of tampering with drawings in four states over a six-year period, and investigators are now expanding the inquiry nationwide to determine if the number could be larger.

State lotteries in Colorado, Wisconsin, and Oklahoma have confirmed they paid jackpots worth $8 million to Tipton associates, including his old college roommate, Robert Rhodes. Investigators are looking at payouts in the other 37 states and U.S. territories that used random-number generators from the Iowa-based association, which administers games and distributes prizes for the lottery consortium.

"It would be pretty naive to believe they are the only four" jackpots involved, said now-retired Iowa deputy attorney general Thomas H. Miller, who oversaw the investigation for 2 ½ years. "If you find one cockroach, you have to assume there are 100 more you haven't found."

The scheme allegedly continued for years. Prosecutors say Eddie Tipton installed software known as a root kit that enabled him to manipulate numbers without a trace. Tipton was tripped up, investigators say, by the audacious move of buying the winning ticket himself at a service station near where he worked in Des Moines.

[Pops]

Ah crap, now my confidence in institutions has tanked!

[Cog]

People who buy lottery tickets are stupid to begin with.

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cog', 'P')eople who buy lottery tickets are stupid to begin with.

[vox_mundi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'A')nd to imagine! I thought this was going to be another
WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE!
thread from Vox.

[onlooker]

Yes this read like a Shakespearean tragedy of Greed. People risking the unpleasant fate of many years in jail to become rich. People forking over substantial amounts of money over a periods of years for the pipe dream of the vaunted "good life" rich life. Being very poor is not very pleasant either. So some money matters but an abundance of money is fools gold.

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'P')rosecutors say Eddie Tipton installed software known as a root kit that enabled him to manipulate numbers without a trace.

[onlooker]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Keith_McClary', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'P')rosecutors say Eddie Tipton installed software known as a root kit that enabled him to manipulate numbers without a trace.

[vtsnowedin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'A')h crap, now my confidence in institutions has tanked!

[vtsnowedin]

I think that taxes should be fair and proportionate to your use of what the taxes support. The gas tax is a good example as in if you don't drive you don't pay and if you drive a heavy truck that wears out the road faster vs. a light fuel efficient car you pay more tax. State lotteries are the stupidity tax. The stupider you are the more tickets you have to buy and the money goes to making the next generation smarter then you are.

[vox_mundi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Keith_McClary', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'P')rosecutors say Eddie Tipton installed software known as a root kit that enabled him to manipulate numbers without a trace.