A US prosecutor has requested that a judge issue subpoenas for the telephone and bank records of two attorneys who are believed to be connected to rigged lottery results.
Eddie and Tommy Tipton, brothers, are charged with conspiring to rig and collect around $2,000,000 in lottery games across several states, and the prosecutor believes that the attorneys may be connected to this. So far the attorneys have not been linked to the crime, or in fact charged with anything, but the prosecutor believes that they are financially involved and the telephone records would prove this.
Eddie Tipton was a lottery computer security administrator who fixed lottery games in Colorado, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, and Kansas, he was found guilty last year of tampering with a 2010 Hot Lotto drawing for a $16,500,000 jackpot. The winning ticket was passed to an associate but was never successfully cashed. However, recently one of the fraud charges against Tipton was thrown out on appeal.
Prosecutors believe that Tipton used his position at the Multi-State Lottery Association to install an algorithm in the computer system that would allow him to predict the winning numbers on two specific days, November 23rd, and December 29th, and all six jackpots linked to the fraud were drawn on those dates between 2005 and 2011.
Now both the Tipton brothers, and the associate Robert Rhodes from Houston are charged with conspiracy and all await trial, but if the attorneys too are dragged into the case, it could be one of the biggest and most sophisticated lottery rigs ever smashed in the USA.