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Nine People Who Beat the Lottery (and Eight Who Got Caught)

Nobody cracked the draw. They cracked the printing, the software, the shop counter, and in one case the rules of arithmetic.

13 min read · page 2 of 10

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Eddie Tipton, who wrote the random number generator

The security director of the US Multi-State Lottery Association put a back door in his own code.

Tipton was the information security director for the organisation that ran drawing software for lotteries across several US states. Between roughly 2005 and 2011 he inserted code into the random number generator that, on three specific days of the year, narrowed the output to a small predictable set.

He and associates then bought tickets matching those numbers. The total taken across several states was in the millions.

He was caught because of a $16.5 million Iowa ticket that nobody could claim cleanly — the claim came through lawyers and shell companies, the lottery refused to pay an anonymous corporate claimant, and CCTV of the purchase was eventually shown on television. A colleague recognised his voice.