By Jason Clayworth

A judge has granted class-action status in a lawsuit that claims people who purchased at least 7.2 million lottery tickets in 19 states were scammed by a former national lottery IT director who worked in Iowa.

Eddie Tipton, the former IT director for the Multi-State Lottery Association in Urbandale, added a secret code to "random" number-generating computer software in 2005 that allowed him to narrow the drawing's winning odds from as great as 5 million to 1 down to 200 to 1.

Tipton's scam — the largest in U.S. history — went undetected for years, and the code was replicated in lottery computer software across the nation. He hijacked at least five winning drawings totaling more than $24 million in prizes in Colorado, Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas and Oklahoma, court records show.

The scheme began to unravel following multiple failed attempts in 2011 to collect a $16.5 million ticket Tipton had purchased at a Des Moines convenience store. He was sentenced in 2017 to up to 25 years in prison in connection with the lottery scams.

Burlington resident Dale Culler is among at least three people who have filed lawsuits naming the Multi-State Lottery Association in connection with the rigged games.

This month, Polk County District Court Judge Michael Huppert granted Culler's effort to seek damages on behalf of potentially hundreds of thousands of players.

Court documents show Culler spent $63 to purchase tickets in two games he believes were affected by Tipton's scam. He has alleged that at least 20 drawings between 2005 and 2013 were affected.

The lottery association — commonly referenced as MUSL — argued that a class-action lawsuit is not manageable because its members cannot be sufficiently ascertained due to the lack of records of people who purchased losing tickets.

Culler argued that people who believed they've been cheated could use affidavits to identify themselves as members of the class-action lawsuit, which Huppert ruled as acceptable.

"The court finds that potential problems of manageability do not outweigh the fact that a class-action suit is the best, and perhaps the only, method of resolving this dispute," Huppert wrote in his opinion.

MUSL is an umbrella organization that is owned and operated by 36 member lotteries including the Iowa Lottery. Its executives previously have said they no longer use computer programs that Tipton designed.

Bret Toyne, the association's director; and Jerry Crawford, a Des Moines attorney who is representing Culler; declined to comment, citing ongoing litigation.

Details showing how players may join Culler's lawsuit have not been filed with the court. A trial is set for March 11.

Culler says games in the following states are affected: Iowa, Colorado, Wisconsin, Kansas, Nebraska, Idaho, Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, South Dakota, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Delaware, Maine, Vermont, Tennessee and Washington, D.C.

Timeline of the biggest crime in US lottery history

The following is a compilation of Lottery Post news coverage chronicling the Hot Lotto mystery and subsequently discovered crime.

We start the timeline with a news story indicating that only 3 months remained for the $16 million Hot Lotto jackpot to be claimed.