Wisconsin officials file charges in lottery-fixing scheme

Associated Press

DES MOINES, Iowa

A former lottery computer administrator from Iowa and a friend from Texas were charged Thursday in Wisconsin with racketeering and theft by fraud after being accused of rigging a 2007 Megabucks game that paid them more than $780,000.

Eddie Tipton, who lived in Iowa and is now listed in court records as having an address in Flatonia, Texas, was charged by the state attorney general’s office along with Robert Rhodes of Sugar Land, Texas. Tipton also faces four counts of computer crime. All are felonies.

The documents allege Tipton, who worked for the Urbandale, Iowa-based Multi-State Lottery Association, modified computer data so he could pick a winning number for the Dec. 29, 2007, Wisconsin Megabucks game. Tipton’s job was to write software designed to randomly pick numbers for lottery computers used for various games by 37 state and territorial lotteries.

A state investigator says Rhodes confessed the scheme, explaining that Tipton recruited him to help win jackpots and gave him a series of numbers to play, one of which won the $783,257 jackpot that Rhodes collected and later split with Tipton.