The Lottery security director accused of rigging random number generator to win $14.3m in
A Texas man accused of helping lottery security official, Eddie Tipton in trying to claim a rigged $14 million jackpot is scheduled to appear in court Thursday to face extradition to Iowa.
Robert Rhodes is expected to contest his extradition during the hearing in Texas although we’re not sure on what grounds.
The Sugar Land businessman was arrested in March 2015 and is currently free on bond. Prosecutors say he worked with his friend in Iowa, Eddie Tipton. Some others in an attempt to claim the Hot Lotto jackpot that Tipton had rigged.
Tipton was a security director for the Multi-State Lottery Association, which operates Powerball.
In January, local authorities arrested Eddie Tipton. The now former Director of Information Security for the Multi-State Lottery Association on fraud charges. The association is a non-profit organisation that runs multi-state games for 33 different state lotteries. Tipton was appointed to ensure the security of the lottery system but found the temptation to win by tampering with the number generator too great and hacked into the system to tip the scales greatly in his favour.
“There is sufficient evidence for a jury to reasonably conclude from the evidence that Defendant tampered with lottery equipment.” Prosecutors wrote in court documents that were revealed earlier this year.
AS the story goes, Prosecutors allege that Tipton inserted a software program into the random number generator for Hot Lotto that allowed him to manipulate the winning combination. It is said that Tipton then went and purchased a ticket with the winning numbers. Later passed the ticket on to Rhodes and others.
Tipton was working as the information security director at the Multi-State Lottery Association. He was captured on CCTV purchasing a Hot Lotto ticket. Tipton is being accused not just of claiming a winning ticket he wasn’t allowed to have. He was hacking into the lottery’s random number generator software to engineer a win for himself.
Yes, the odds are long and of course. We all want to win. But this is certainly not the way to go about getting your hands on some lottery millions