Another charge has been filed against a former Iowa lottery security official convicted of rigging one drawing and accused of fixing two others over five years, this time for felony money laundering, reports the Des Moines Register. The Iowa Attorney General’s Office is casting a wide net to see whether other lotteries might be affected. Iowa law enforcement and lottery officials asked for the public’s help in tracking down more frauds that could have been committed by Eddie Raymond Tipton, a former information security director at the Multi-State Lottery Association. Said Doug Jacobson of Iowa State University’s information assurance center, “I’m not sure we’ll ever know the extent of what he’s done.”
Tipton was convicted in July of fraud charges and sentenced to 10 years in prison stemming from an attempt to rig a 2010 Hot Lotto drawing and claim a winning ticket worth $14.3 million. He returned Friday to Iowa to face a charge of ongoing criminal conduct, with authorities claiming he tampered with machines to help a close friend and brother win a combined $1.3 million from lotteries in Wisconsin and Colorado in 2005 and 2007. The new charge alleges that Tipton, 52, manipulated the outcome of a 2005 Colorado lottery drawing that reportedly won $500,000 for his brother, Tommy Tipton. Testimony at Eddie Tipton’s trial showed that he regularly traveled as part of his job to perform security audits on lottery equipment, a fact that raises suspicions about the scope of potential frauds. “That’s sort of the scary part of this,” Jacobson said. “There’s all sorts of things he could try to do.”