[vox_mundi]

Jackpot-Fixing Investigation Expands to More State Lotteries

The allegations read like a movie plot: a lottery industry insider installs an undetectable software program in the computers that pick winning numbers so he can know them in advance. He enlists accomplices to play those numbers and collect the jackpots. And they enrich themselves for years until a misstep unravels their high-tech scheme.

Eddie Tipton, former security director of the Multi-State Lottery Association, has been accused of tampering with drawings in four states over a six-year period, and investigators are now expanding the inquiry nationwide to determine if the number could be larger.

State lotteries in Colorado, Wisconsin, and Oklahoma have confirmed they paid jackpots worth $8 million to Tipton associates, including his old college roommate, Robert Rhodes. Investigators are looking at payouts in the other 37 states and U.S. territories that used random-number generators from the Iowa-based association, which administers games and distributes prizes for the lottery consortium.

"It would be pretty naive to believe they are the only four" jackpots involved, said now-retired Iowa deputy attorney general Thomas H. Miller, who oversaw the investigation for 2 ½ years. "If you find one cockroach, you have to assume there are 100 more you haven't found."

The scheme allegedly continued for years. Prosecutors say Eddie Tipton installed software known as a root kit that enabled him to manipulate numbers without a trace. Tipton was tripped up, investigators say, by the audacious move of buying the winning ticket himself at a service station near where he worked in Des Moines.

[Pops]

Ah crap, now my confidence in institutions has tanked!

[Cog]

People who buy lottery tickets are stupid to begin with.

[Outcast_Searcher]

People who buy lottery tickets are stupid to begin with.

True Cog. However, we're ALL required to participate (directly or indirectly) in a whole multitude of government programs. A huge number of them are vulnerable to corruption. Using Medicare as an example, government seems to be MUCH worse at combating corruption (e.g. insurance fraud) than private companies.)

So I'm required to use the USPS, the DMV, the courts (and jury) system, etc. -- and am exposed and helpless to an endless litany of corruption and incompetence. Of course, by pointing this out, I predict a litany of left wingers stating how much "better" government is than corporations (since if you spend other peoples' money, efficiency doesn't matter).

So OK. I never buy lottery tickets. Now, how do I (as one example) opt out of school taxes which fund an education system producing many high school graduates who can't even make change if the LAN attached to the cash register goes down, until the schools actually produce a meaningful education for all the money they spend? For other examples, high school graduates very often can't spell, use the correct word, or write a coherent paragraph in an online comment thread. Why should this be acceptable just because the system is confiscating the tax payers' money?

[vox_mundi]

And to imagine! I thought this was going to be another
WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE!
thread from Vox.

And as for All ...

Mostly most; sometimes some; never All

You got me confused with MBS

And it's really about how broke desperate people are kind of desperate, depressed, and self destructive. And how there is always a predator waiting to prey on a sucker Who would of thought?

You forgot "greedy"

[onlooker]

Yes this read like a Shakespearean tragedy of Greed. People risking the unpleasant fate of many years in jail to become rich. People forking over substantial amounts of money over a periods of years for the pipe dream of the vaunted "good life" rich life. Being very poor is not very pleasant either. So some money matters but an abundance of money is fools gold.

[Keith_McClary]

Prosecutors say Eddie Tipton installed software known as a root kit that enabled him to manipulate numbers without a trace.

It works on voting machines too.

[onlooker]

Prosecutors say Eddie Tipton installed software known as a root kit that enabled him to manipulate numbers without a trace.

It works on voting machines too.

Diebold!

[vtsnowedin]

Ah crap, now my confidence in institutions has tanked!

[vtsnowedin]

I think that taxes should be fair and proportionate to your use of what the taxes support. The gas tax is a good example as in if you don't drive you don't pay and if you drive a heavy truck that wears out the road faster vs. a light fuel efficient car you pay more tax. State lotteries are the stupidity tax. The stupider you are the more tickets you have to buy and the money goes to making the next generation smarter then you are.

[vox_mundi]

Prosecutors say Eddie Tipton installed software known as a root kit that enabled him to manipulate numbers without a trace.

It works on voting machines too.

21st Century Ballot-Tampering Techniques
Can We Trust These Machines?
Company Information - (What you won’t find on the company Web sites)
Federal Voting System Problem Reports

... We identify a number of new vulnerabilities of this system which, if exploited maliciously, can invalidate the results of an election process utilizing the terminal. Furthermore, based on our findings an AV-OS can be compromised with off-the-shelf equipment in a matter of minutes even if the machine has its removable memory card sealed in place. The basic attack can be applied to effect a variety of results, including entirely neutralizing one candidate so that their votes are not counted, swapping the votes of two candidates, or biasing the results by shifting some votes from one candidate to another. Such vote tabulation corruptions can lay dormant until the election day, thus avoiding detection through pre-election tests.