IOWA CITY, Iowa — New digital evidence reveals how a lottery insider manipulated drawings to enrich himself and his associates, Iowa investigators said Wednesday as they charged his brother with securing jackpots in Oklahoma and Colorado worth $1.2 million cash.
Tommy Tipton, a former justice of the peace and reserve police officer in Texas, turned himself in Wednesday to face a charge of ongoing criminal conduct.
Authorities allege he conspired with his older brother, Eddie, the former security director of the Multi-State Lottery Association who was convicted last year of fixing a $16.5 million Hot Lotto jackpot. He’s also awaiting trial on charges linking him to lottery prizes in several other states.
Prosecutors have alleged Tipton tampered with random number generators that he built and installed for use by state lotteries. But their case had been based on circumstantial evidence because the computers he worked on at the association had been erased or destroyed.
But in what investigators called a significant break, court documents filed Wednesday show Wisconsin authorities were able to recover the random number generator used for a $2 million jackpot Megabucks jackpot paid out to Tipton’s best friend in 2008.
A forensic examination found that the generator had unauthorized segments of code that were installed after it had been reviewed and verified as legitimate by a lottery security firm. That code directed the generator not to produce random numbers on three particular days of the year when they fell on certain days of the week. Instead, numbers on those days would be drawn by a “multivariable algorithm” that Tipton could predict based on his knowledge of how it worked, according to an affidavit by Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation agent Don Smith.
All six prizes linked to Tipton so far were drawn on either the days of Nov. 23 or Dec. 29 between 2005 and 2011.
The criminal complaint filed Wednesday says Tipton first came under scrutiny in 2006, when investigators received a tip that he had $500,000 in cash.
He told investigators he got the money after purchasing a ticket that won a share of a $4.5 million Colorado Lotto jackpot, and recruited a friend to claim the prize because he didn’t want his wife to know about the winnings as they were considering divorce. His friend claimed the $569,000 lump sum cash option, and passed the winnings to Tipton.
At the time, investigators didn’t know that Tipton’s brother wrote and installed the program that Colorado Lottery officials used to draw the numbers.
In an e-mailed statement to The Denver Post, the Colorado Lottery said, “The Colorado Department of Revenue and the Lottery are aware of this issue and have been working closely and collaboratively with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, Iowa Bureau of Investigation and the Pueblo District Attorney’s Office to investigate any allegations of wrongdoing.”
