A former Multi-State Lottery Association employee in Iowa, USA has pleaded guilty to rigging several lotteries in order to win millions of dollars.
Eddie Tipton helped to write code for a number of US lotteries, including some of the biggest ones, and was the computer security director at the Multi-State Lottery Association.
The 54-year-old pleaded guilty to one count of ongoing criminal conduct and publicly acknowledged his lead role in the lottery fraud scheme for the first time since the case began.
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"I wrote software that included code that allowed me to understand or technically predict winning numbers, and I gave those numbers to other individuals who then won the lottery and shared the winnings with me," Tipton said when asked by Judge Brad McCall to explain what he did.
"It was more of a trying to see if I could do it scenario and then ... it just continued to exist," Tipton told the judge. "The opportunity was there and I just took advantage of it later. But when I first wrote it, I did not know if I would ever use it."
The software engineer told prosecutors that at the time he believed he was exploiting a loophole in the random number software and was not under the impression that what he was doing was illegal.
Tipton manipulated the software he had designed in order to predict winning numbers. He then gave these winning numbers to his brother and other people who would send the winnings to him.
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He, his brother - Tommy Tipton - and businessman Robert Rhodes will have to repay $2.2million (£1.5m) in fraudulently claimed prize money from Colorado, Oklahoma, Wisconsin and Kansas.
Investigators found that Tipton had written and installed code that allowed the computers to function normally on all but three days of the year - 27th May, 22nd November and 29th December. On these days, they would produce predictable numbers if the drawings occurred on Wednesdays or Saturdays after 8pm.
Straight after Eddie Tipton's admission, his brother admitted to conspiracy to commit theft by deception.
"My brother did provide me with numbers to play in Colorado and Oklahoma lotteries and he told me that it was illegal for him to play the lotteries but gave me the numbers to play," Tommy Tipton said.
Tommy Tipton will have to sell part of his farm to pay the fees.
"That is financially effectively going to more than wipe him out," said his attorney, Mark Weinhardt. "Mr. Eddie Tipton does not have the resources to satisfy restitution in any meaningful degree. Mr. Tommy Tipton does and this will effectively take all of his assets."
Sources: The Des Moines Register & Daily Mail
Featured Image Credit: PA Images; Eddie Tipton appears in court