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Iowa Computer Programmer Gets 25 Years For Lottery Scam (desmoinesregister.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Des Moines Register: Eddie Tipton, the Iowa brainpower behind a case of multi-state lottery fraud, will spend up to 25 years in prison for rigging "random" drawing jackpots. It's unknown how many years Tipton will actually spend in prison. He could be paroled within three or four years, his attorneys noted. Tipton, 54, was a longtime computer programmer in the Iowa offices of the Multi-State Lottery Association who installed software that allowed him to pick winning numbers in some of the nation's most popular lottery drawings. His scam began to unravel following unsuccessful attempts to anonymously collect a $16.5 million Hot Lotto ticket that was purchased at a Des Moines convenience store in 2010. "I certainly regret," Tipton said. "It's difficult even saying that. With all the people I know behind me that I hurt and I regret it. I'm sorry."
At 54, he's someone who didn't like his job.
He should be ashamed for scamming stupid people out of their money...oh wait.
He did it with a computer. So, he should be found innocent!!! ...or something...
...getting caught
This story lacks entropy
(Outside of deciding the break the law in the first place, of course)
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
My big mistake was to mine reddcoins instead of mooncoins.
Uh, wait...
#DeleteFacebook
given his constantly excuses I think the only thing he is sorry for is that he got caught.
don't go for the big prize keep it small under X that can be paid out by the local lotto store is unlike to rise a flag even more so then there like 1000's of them in a urban area. At least 30+ within 4 miles.
The big prizes lead to audits
the ball based ones are harder to rig and easier to test for loaded balls. Not some software with an RGN that can be hacked or worked out due to it being buggy.
25 years? You get less time for manslaughter or armed robbery.
The doctors charging ObamaCare with scam services never provided scammed more money than this guy and I bet they get 5 years -- if they do any prison time.
That's was my reaction. Take out just enough, in cash, that with your probably meager pay you're doing pretty well for yourself. Then I noticed where he's from: Iowa. If you lived in New York City you could cash a couple dozen lottery tickets a week an never visit the same lottery agent twice, but if you lived in Cedar Rapids you'd get noticed eventually.
Still, trying to take out over a million bucks is crazy. In most states you can't take a large lottery prize anonymously, which he should have known.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
you only get to hear about the ones they discover though. Maybe the ball tampering they detect isn't the first occurrence
Nullius in verba
1) This is why the names of lottery winners are made public. There may be an exception or two, but the vast majority of states require the person's name to be made known.
2) In Pennsylvania, it is illegal for employees of the Lottery Commission, and their immediate families, to play any lottery games, even the small(er) daily drawings and scratch off tickets.
Sure, he could have given the big prize to someone else to collect, but then he'd either have to split it or risk the person keeping it all because he couldn't say anything.
RGN... WTF?
"I certainly regret [getting caught]."
What he regrets is they have caught him. Why do so many miscreants even bother to say that they regret what they have done, when it is obvious that what they regret is getting caught?
I thought this is why they have the video of people pulling the ping pong balls out of hoppers. I know at least Powerball (which is a MUSL lottery, same as where this guy worked), operates that way. It could still be scammed, but it requires physical access to tamper with the balls.
If a computer is picking the numbers it seems like a conflict of interest since the list of known printed tickets could also be interfaced with the computer.
RNG
Random God Number
777 You win!
I'm not sure if this is supposed to be funny or stupid...just like the reply I'm replying to!
It's really the only reliable means to a happy ending.
You don't rig the drawing. You find a way to insert a record of the winning number being sold after the drawing. You get some blank lottery ticket paper and print yourself that winning ticket.
Have gnu, will travel.
Eh, it still works. Randomly Generated Number.
Simple solution. Hire somebody to cash the ticket. Both parties get proof that they were conspiring to defraud the lotto, so if one screws the other, they have leverage to tank the whole thing and go to jail. This works provided both are about equally prepared to go to jail - so pick another fat 54-year-old. How old is creimer?
I read the article. Looks to me like he is getting off light. May only spend 4 years in jail. Only has to return 3 million. How much did he and his companions steal? Story gets vague at that point. There is probably enough to go around to let him off early don't you think? I only believe that you should believe half of what you hear and none of what you see..
I did something like that as a practical joke once. I worked as a clerk and had access to blank lottery paper. I took a few feet and a losing ticket. I scanned the ticket, erased the background and rearranged the numbers so that they were one number off from the winner. I had to tape the blank ticket on the edge of some printer paper to get it to line up and it worked near flawlessly. There was a slight smudge in the corner. But it looked like a real thermal printed ticket. I hid it in the store but never saw the results of my handy work.
"If you're going to steal, steal big." -My Mom
the ball based ones are harder to rig and easier to test for loaded balls.
The balls can be manipulated in a lot more ways than loading them. Imperfect roundness, surface tension, expandability with temperature changes, vibration when exposed to ultrasounds - there are so many ways that are very hard to detect that may skew the odds of some balls being picked more often than others.
But you still have a computer that has all the sold tickets registered, at least with a checksum to prevent forgery, and that's a big fat target. It doesn't help much if the balls are random if the ticket system is vulnerable.
The balls can be manipulated in a lot more ways than loading them. Imperfect roundness, surface tension, expandability with temperature changes, vibration when exposed to ultrasounds
More difficult to do discretely. Even if you work in a position where you have access to the drawing machine and the balls, it's a lot more likely that some coworker notices you swapping balls with doctored balls. Not to mention the need to have them manufactured in such a way that they look exactly like the real balls. No off color, off smell, off sound when they bump, etc. And don't think about going to the same manufacturer as the original balls, he'd likely mention the strange order to your employer.
- there are so many ways that are very hard to detect that may skew the odds of some balls being picked more often than others.
... and this will show up on some simple statistical analysis.
Whereas by manipulating a computer-based PRNG, you could manipulate the numbers in such a way that not one number is more frequent than others, but that you could still calculate it if you knew the right formula.
Ingenious of you to randomly shuffle the letters so that only crypto-experts like me know what you're talking about!
He regrets having done it because they caught him. So having been caught is a condition for the regret, but it's now a given so he can truthfully say that he unconditionally regrets.
ReaGaN.
Ezekiel 23:20
I'd hope they go pretty far to prevent that from happening.
1) Balls are cheap, so you keep a dozen sets of them, split into two pools, the use pool and the hold pool. A die is rolled to choose the set of balls used in the drawing. After the drawing, the die is rolled again and a hold pool box is put into the use pool and the recently used box of balls goes into the hold pool. This makes sure nobody knows which balls will get used and no way to keep a single set of balls in use consistently.
2) Balls are locked away and it takes 3 employees to work with them under video surveillance.
3) Frequent replacement of all ball sets.
4) Chain of custody for all balls from manufacturer to lottery.
This would make it really difficult to tamper with the balls or even know which balls would be used for any drawing or even how many times they might get used.
Easy
They do that. They also don't permit people to touch the balls without gloves on as the oils in your hands affect the balls. They rotate through different ball sets each drawing and replace after a set amount of time.
What he needed was a trusted accomplice.
Someone he could trust to play it straight while collecting the winnings and be fair about dividing up the spoils.
Have your agent do his/her thing, collect your share and play out your exit strategy.
Retire to an island somewhere.
In most states you can't take a large lottery prize anonymously, which he should have known.
True, but I believe there are tricks around that. A competent lawyer can create a trust and the trustee collects and manages the winnings on your behalf.
In a way I don't blame him; how did they let it come to the point that one person was able to game the system? Why didn't they have procedures in place to stop this? Or maybe why didn't they hold people who weren't directly involved accountable for not checking what this guy was doing? Easy to say in hindsight true but this wasn't on par with rigging a community raffle, there was MILLIONS of dollars involved.
This is my sig, there are many like it but this one is mine
And was asked how do I know. I said no place I have ever worked was straight once on the inside, Be it Aerospace Military. If there is a way someone in or for power will abuse it.
RNG
Joe_Dragon was clearly using the French ordering. Randome Nombre généré .
What he needed was a trusted accomplice.
Someone he could trust to play it straight while collecting the winnings and be fair about dividing up the spoils.
Have your agent do his/her thing, collect your share and play out your exit strategy.
Retire to an island somewhere.
And historically, this scheme hasn't been working very well because of human greed. Whoever is willing to be accomplice, the person is greedy. When the person sees that much money in hand, the person wants it all -- human nature. Very rare to see this scheme succeed...
The state can scam millions of the gullible citizens they are supposed to be looking out for by selling 'lottery' tickets. These tickets ostensibly go to help disadvantaged kids receive a decent education, when in reality they go to politicians so they can afford to not send their children to the crappy schools they run. Rather than taxing their subjects and using the money wisely, the state openly encourages gambling. At best 50% of the money goes to overhead that the lottery commission (the family members and buddies of the politicians) need to run this scam.
It seems to me that this guy is not the real problem.
The state is openly saying that if you do not buy lottery tickets you are a bad person who hates children. If this is the case I proudly hate kids and want them all to die horrible deaths, because that is how i roll.
Therein lies quite a paradox.
The people one could trust the most to carry out such a scheme are the same people most likely to be linked to you by an astute observer.
1) Balls are cheap, so you keep a dozen sets of them, split into two pools, the use pool and the hold pool. A die is rolled to choose the set of balls used in the drawing. After the drawing, the die is rolled again and a hold pool box is put into the use pool and the recently used box of balls goes into the hold pool. This makes sure nobody knows which balls will get used and no way to keep a single set of balls in use consistently.
It's still a problem if the balls all come from the same manufacturer.
And, even if you manage to keep different sets, some of which are not bad, the bad ones are going to be used every now and then. That's enough to skew the results in the long run.
More difficult to do discretely. Even if you work in a position where you have access to the drawing machine and the balls, it's a lot more likely that some coworker notices you swapping balls with doctored balls.
Exploits like these are more likely to happen at the manufacturing side. (Just like with slot machines and voting machines, but I repeat myself.)
... and this will show up on some simple statistical analysis.
There aren't enough drawings performed for a skew to be statistically significant. That, say, the number 8 is picked twice as often as the number 17 in 100 drawings is not in itself alarming. It would be more alarming if the distribution was too uniform.
This has been done. It happened in 1986 and was done by the lottery number announcer Pennsylvania. He had numerous accomplices. He was caught because the accomplices who actually bought the tickets (and won) were investigated and got caught calling him from a pay phone from the location of some of the ticket purchases. They also bet on the winning numbers with bookies. Not exactly criminal masterminds.
The purp only got two years though. Most of the accomplices got off scott free by turning states evidence.
If it succeeded, we wouldn't know.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
If it succeeded, we wouldn't know.
Right. But human nature usually urges them to brag or disclose to someone else. Still not easy to keep secret. So it is still rare...
I wouldn't bet on it being all that rare. This definitely falls under white collar crime, which gets a lot less press coverage and consequentially less funding, than violent street crime. Just look at the numbers for bank robberies from the FBI. The last time I looked in a good year the FBI was only able to identify half of the suspects. That doesn't even equate to catching half of the suspects. Bank Robberies are unlikely to not be reported as the FBI is responsible for them, and so you can bet that the numbers are pretty accurate. Banks are aware of the danger of being robbed and so have lots of cameras and usually armed guards on the premise. Robbing a bank is usually viewed as being a high risk venture even by the criminals themselves. So you have a kind of crime where the odds of getting busted are relatively high, but still only a 50% chance of being identified. I think that says a lot for the odds of getting away with white collar crimes, and especially when the fact that a crime was committed might not ever be realized.
It would seem to be a self re-enforcing myth that people can't keep their mouths shut about crimes they've committed. In white collar crime it is highly likely that a person or organization wouldn't even realize they had been victimized. So law enforcement can only make guesses as to how much of it there is and the low hanging fruit that is easiest to catch is going to be the criminals that couldn't keep their mouth shut.
This is similar to the low homicide rate, and insanely high closure rate for homicides in Japan. You could choose to believe that Japan just has much less lethal crime and that the police are magically more effective. Or you could notice that if a case doesn't appear to be open and shut, it won't be ruled a homicide. And on top of that attempted homicides are counted as homicides for reporting purposes while robbery homicides aren't.
> But human nature usually urges them to brag or disclose to someone else.
Does it?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
My balls can be loaded and manipulated. I invite attractive members of the opposite sex to test and manipulate them at will!