How A $3 Hotdog Uncovered a $24.7 Million Lottery Scam

so how do you achieve the American dream if your dad doesn't own an emerald mine you walk into the store you plunk down a dollar and with nothing but luck you win the lottery and while that's a great dream of course I mean we all know the odds are astronomical but what if we could maybe control those odds or better yet eliminate them completely illegally winning a mind-boggling 24 million dollars over the course of a decade Eddie Tipton is considered the greatest Lottery cheat of all time but you gotta ask how the hell did he pick the winning lottery numbers multiple times for over 10 years well kind of simple Eddie Tipton worked for the lottery on December 29 2010 the hot lotto in Iowa held its drawing for a 16.4 million dollar jackpot now the winning ticket had been purchased at a quick trip convenience store in Des Moines Iowa why would you live there but for someone the American dream you know became very real but then the ticket went and claimed for days and then it was weeks and then it was months well it's been almost a month since we had announced that we had a hot lotto 16.5 million dollar Hot Lotto winner person who has purchased or owns this ticket probably doesn't know that they have it and then it was nearly a year now believe it or not the lottery fish was actually want the money to be claimed you know it's good PR to have the big win or holding the big old check and in the meantime they were flooded with over 200 fake winner claims oh my friend who died in a car accident had the ticket the winning ticket to my grandma's casket but what the public didn't know was they had a video of the person buying the ticket along with the serial number and anyone that wanted to take the claim had to verify both of those which no one could nearly a year later now public book reminders but issued every single month and it even made national news about this unclaimed ticket because one year after that purchase date the 16 million dollar ticket would expire to nothing now 30 days before the expiration date Canadian attorney Philip Johnston called in and provided what no one else could the correct serial numbers for the winning lottery ticket and he had said he had purchased a ticket himself but then said he could not personally deliver the ticket because he was too sick to come down from Canada maybe it sounds a little sketch but they asked him what he wore on the day that he bought it and Philip paused he was wearing a tweed jacket with dress pants and dress shoes now although he gave the correct serial number the man in the video buying the winning ticket was wearing a hoodie and sweatpants he was lying so they didn't give him the jackpot now a week later Philip Johnston calls in again but now with a different story stating that he had actually told a little white lie that it wasn't him that bought the ticket but he was representing the winner of it and he was a wealthy man who wanted to remain anonymous now there's just one problem with that it's against the roles of the Iowa Lottery all winners names have to be made public but they still didn't want to reveal the Winner's name but then on the final day down to the last hour before the 16 million dollar ticket expired an attorney from New York shows up with the actual winning ticket in his hand we've been looking for 365 days for this and with one hour and 50 minutes left the two individuals you just met brought us the what we believe is the winning ticket for the hot lotto uh jackpot but this time the ticket was signed by a trust in the Belize and the trust beneficiary was a shell company in Belize and who was the president of that shell company oh it was Philip Johnston the attorney that called in the first time we've got to make sure that we're paying the right amount and the money to to the proper and appropriate persons so we are not paying this particular ticket today then in a lastage effort the attorneys asked if they could claim the money in cash and then turn it over to the state and they could give it to charity but Lottery lawyers decline based on concerns about the legality of the purchase possession and presentation of the ticket we couldn't verify the winner now the attorneys were so angry at this point that they actually threatened to sue the Iowa Lottery until the they realized that they would have to actually reveal the real Winner's name in the court case the lottery received yet another letter the purchaser of the ticket has elected to remain anonymous and withdraw the claim and to thank all that person had to do was provide birthdate and address and they would have walked away with millions of dollars and the 16 million dollar jackpot went to no one now why were they trying so hard to hide the name of this ticket winner was the real winner possibly murdered maybe a victim of blackmail or maybe even theft either way the whole thing stung and the FBI was called in to investigate now it seemed a bit strange when Eddie Tipton the security director for the multi-state lottery lived in a 8 500 square foot mansion decked out with the 20-seat custom home theater and a basketball court now Eddie didn't make that much money his co-workers at the lottery often wondered how the hell could he afford a baller Mansion when he only made about ninety thousand dollars a year now he told his Lottery co-workers that his house was just his one Vice and that even though he was single and in his 40s that one day he was going to have a huge family and this story kind of made sense it was 2007 a lot of people bought homes that couldn't afford so no one not even his co-workers at the lottery suspected a thing now as the FBI investigated the case kind of went cold there wasn't a lot of evidence there's too many dead ends until four years later it ended up on prosecutor Rob Sand's desk now nobody expected him to get anywhere but Rob Sands was the hot new prosecutor on the Block that wanted to make a name for himself but all Rob had to work with was the grainy video of the dude buying the ticket that they didn't know and the name of some Better Call Saul Canadian attorney that called in with the winning ticket so investigators flew up to Canada and reviewed the first attorney but then he said that he was actually collecting the ticket on behalf of another attorney that was from Texas and when they went to that attorney he said the winning ticket had been given to him by Texas businessman Robert Rhodes but Robert Rhodes looked and sounded nothing like the guy in that video so four years after having the lottery drawing held Rob Sands released that video Nationwide to ask for help in trying to identify the guy in that video along with an audio track of his voice now Within days thousands of people called into the FBI and sounded like my grandpa Oh it sounded like my co-worker but one name kept coming up you see dozens and dozens of Lottery employees from across the country had called in and instantly recognized the voice as Eddie Tipton but this was a little hard to believe I mean Eddie Tipton was the security director for the multi-state lottery meaning he's the guy in charge of making sure no one cheated and legally couldn't even buy lotto tickets but what were the odds that Eddie Tipton could also pick the winning numbers the coincidences were too far so how are the winning numbers picked for the lottery well back in the day the numbers were put on ping pong balls whipped around in a cage and one by one were taken out in the public eye so everyone could see the contest was legit but even this system had problems when Lottery workers cheated the game by filling some of the balls with water to improve their own odds and then when those balls exploded on live TV a new system was needed now today lotteries picked the winning numbers using computers but to under understand the Real Genius of how Eddie tipped and cheated we need to remember that computers never do anything randomly so how do you get a random number on a computer well you actually kind of don't so it starts with an input number and runs it through a complex math problem called the random number generator to Output a final number that looks random looks but if you have that same input number you will always get that same final number and that's kind of the problem so to get a truly random final number one that you could use for the lottery you need a random input number so lotteries measure the radiation of americium 241 in the air that number is plugged into a random number generator and that comes up with the winning lotto numbers now what's amerisem 241 you might ask well it's the microscopic nuclear fallout from weapons test over the last 50 years that surrounds everyone on Earth I mean it really is no big problem but remember each time you take that same input number and run it through the math problem you will always get that same final random number so like an imperfect theoretical sense it actually isn't random but that was the crack that Eddie Tipton managed to exploit now in January of 2015 Eddie Tipton was arrested for defrauding the Iowa Lottery now the feds had a decent amount of evidence against him video was clear the audio analysis matched up with his voice and even though Eddie said he was out of town the day that ticket was bought well his own phone records showed that he was in that store at that time when the winning ticket was bought now in custody he lawyered up he didn't say a word about how or if he even did it and the FEDS had no idea how we did it so the only thing they could nail him for was buying a lottery ticket as a lottery worker now again these broad charges against Tipton were told are based solely on the belief that he attempted to falsely redeem a lottery ticket and have nothing to do with any any evidence that he was somehow able to use his position and expertise to manipulate the game but then the skeletons came out of Eddie's closet because Eddie had gotten his job as the Director of security for the lottery as a convicted felon for burglary how does that even happen now McCourt Eddie would demand a fast and Swift trial but prosecutor Rob Sands actually thought this was odd most white-collar criminals don't get caught on the first time they commit a crime he thought maybe Eddie wanted to shorten the investigation time because maybe there was more fraudulent lottery tickets out there that they hadn't discovered yet now when Eddie was asked about who Robert Rhodes was to him you know the Texas business guy that had the 16 million dollar ticket well Eddie said he had no idea who he was he didn't know what he looked like he never even heard of the name but they were friends on Facebook they had been co-workers for the last 10 years they were best friends when Eddie Tipton was asked what he did for work he had failed to mention one little detail that he was the guy that wrote the program that picked the winning lottery numbers now at this point it looked like an inside job or it was a huge amount of coincidences that had led Eddie Tipton's best friend to win the lottery now there was one huge problem with this entire case the computer that the numbers were used to pick the winning lottery numbers had been wiped clean three times over now although there was no evidence about how this actually happened the feds had a decent Theory now the hot lotto uses two computers that are locked in a room that only five people have access to and you guessed it Eddie Tipton was one of those people now inside of that room there's a locked Plexiglas box that you need two keys from two employees to open up and then they pick the winning lottery numbers and this whole process is recorded on cameras 24 7. so how good of this hacking been done those cameras that record record one frame every minute meaning that theoretically Eddie Tipton could have gone inside the room for some routine maintenance with another co-worker while that co-worker was turned away in the span of 59 seconds Eddie Tippin could have put in the USB key changed an estimated two lines of code and then he would know what the winning lottery numbers are at only he would know about but in Eddie's defense there was no evidence of any of this all of the witnesses testified Eddie Tipton was the man in that video even the person that had sold him that lotto ticket and the hot dog said it was him but Eddie Tipton's defense had a rebuttal to that they said that that was actually impossible because Eddie Tipton is not a hot dog guy that he's more of a jack-in-the-box man and honestly I can tell so what what happened here Eddie Tipton bought the winning lottery ticket gave that to a good friend named Robert Rhodes who then gave it to his attorney who then gave it to another attorney that specializes in hiding money and that's how he got to the situation so Eddie had access Eddie knew how to commit the crime there were cell phone records Facebook messages all going back 10 years that linked him to Robert Road so the jury would rule guilty and Eddie would be sentenced to 10 years in jail but the story is far from over now remember when Eddie said he wanted a fast and Swift trial and Rob Sands thought maybe that was a little bit odd because there was more fraud out there well after the trial the feds would come through 44 000 winning lottery tickets across all of the states for over a decade and they would cross-reference the winners with Eddie Tipton's Facebook friends phone numbers linkedins and uh some strange coincidences came up on November 23rd 2005 Eddie Tipton's brother won a 600 000 jackpot in Colorado Eddie Tipton's program was used in Colorado on December 29 9 2007 Robert Rhodes had won eight hundred thousand dollars in Wisconsin Eddie Tipton's program was used in Wisconsin on November 23 2011 Kaio Khan who was a good friend of Eddie Tipton's brother won 1.2 million dollars in Oklahoma Eddie Tipton's program was used there and on December 29 2010 in Kansas Eddie Tipton's ex-girlfriend that he met on eHarmony won 22 thousand dollars was all this a bit strange was this all just God's coincidences now besides that he tipped in being the main connection you might notice that it was only two dates that were winning November 23rd and December 29th now again I mean there was no evidence of this program until they found a storage unit they had had one computer that was used to do the winning lotto numbers in 2007. right there in plain sight on the computer they discovered the code that Eddie had actually used and it was exactly how they theorized on those two dates it would put in a specific input number so that the random number generator would be something that Eddie always knew for the winning numbers for the lottery so with enough evidence to tie him to five hacked lottery drawings Eddie Tipton finally confessed Mr Tipton I'm Kim from KCCI what's your reaction today shock that's it but Eddie claimed that he was never in the lottery scam business and actually said he was a accidental felon he said one day he was playing around with the program and realized a crucial flaw noticed he could exploit and then just left the Hacked program there for over a decade I mean all the situation was was a geeky computer hacker who was just messing around with the program he's so genius that he just oh sorry and Eddie really believes this dating I'm a single guy making about a hundred thousand a year I didn't need the money with that Eddie Tipton will be sentenced to 25 years in prison that she would be surprised to learn Eddie's out on parole and still claims that he had never done it

Channel: Vince Vintage

Views: 2,644,658

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Id: zj2FXAZiYLE

Length: 14min 12sec (852 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 06 2023