Former Iowa Lottery Computer Programmer Gets 25 Years For Rigging Drawings

Everyone else thought they were random numbers, but they weren’t.

A former employee for the Iowa offices of the Multi-State Lottery Association was sentenced this month to up to 25 years behind bars for a years-long scam involving the manipulation of numbers in supposedly random drawing jackpots, according to a report from The Des Moines Register.

Eddie Tipton, 54, pleaded guilty to installing software that allowed him to fix the drawings. The scam ran for a handful of years until he tried to collect a $16.5 million ticket in 2010. That’s when his lucky started to run out. After a lengthy investigation, he was eventually charged in 2015.

Tipton also said he fixed drawings in Colorado, Wisconsin, Kansas and Oklahoma, though he will serve his time only in Iowa.

His attorney reportedly blasted the lottery in broad terms, saying that there are still no safeguards to prevent someone else from doing a crime similar to what Tipton did.

“[T]he lack of interest in actually examining the program being used to pick these numbers is kind of alarming, really,” said attorney Dean Stowers.

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