Lottery fraudster in fresh trouble after rigging €14m jackpot

DES MOINES | The convicted mastermind of a failed 2010 Iowa lottery scam was arrested Friday on a new felony charge alleging he and his associates may have been involved in prior rigged jackpot drawings where lottery payouts topping $1.3 million were collected.

Tipton, 52, of Norwalk, is charged with ongoing criminal conduct in the tampering of lottery equipment, representatives for the Iowa Lottery and the Iowa Department of Public Safety said.

Authorities began investigating after Tipton bought a winning Hot Lotto ticket in 2010. Prosecutors say Tipton inserted a stealth program into the computer that randomly picked the winning numbers.

Tipton had been released pending the appeal of his fraud conviction. He was booked into the Polk County Jail and then released on a $25,000 dollar bond.

Investigators say that conviction led to revelations that friends and family of Tipton cashed in lottery jackpots in other states, including Colorado and Wisconsin, over a period of several years, totaling more than a million dollars in winnings.

The complaint also ties Eddie Tipton to a $783,257 payout that Wisconsin lottery officials made to a limited liability corporation controlled by Rhodes, Tipton’s longtime friend from Texas. Tipton returned to Iowa from Texas today. “This is an ongoing investigation and officials will continue to work on the case, coordinating with other jurisdictions and agencies as necessary, to run out any and all leads”, said Jim Saunders, Director of DPS Investigative Operations. In the Colorado case, Tommy Tipton had a friend claim the lottery winnings and paid him 10 percent for doing so, according to court documents. That best friend is facing charges in the 2005 case here in Iowa that sparked the investigation.

Eddie Tipton was found guilty of rigging lottery equipment in September. “Mr. Tipton has voluntarily appeared to answer for this charge that he expects will similarly fail”.

Terry Rich of the Iowa Lottery called on lotteries nationwide to assist in the investigation. We are asking anyone who is aware of someone claiming a lottery prize on behalf of another person to please let us know by taking this survey.

The winnings in Colorado and Wisconsin were through manual play games that generate numbers at random through a system built at the Iowa-based Multi-State Lottery Association, authorities said.

The Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation launched a probe partly aimed at identifying the ticket’s original purchaser – a man shown on the convenience store’s surveillance camera wearing jeans and a hooded jacket.