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OOPS: Phone fraudster tries to scam copNews Story
Includes video report A phone scammer made a grave error when he dialed Officer Jeff Bowling and attempted to access his personal information last week. At first, the caller had no clue he was on the line with a cop. Officer Bowling with the Peebles Police Department in Adams County, Ohio, was actually working on the case when he got a call from a strange number that turned out to be a phone scammer. He quickly began to record the conversation, which lasted for 11 minutes. A man on the
May 16, 2018, 2:54 pm - Lottery News

With promise of $1.5m prize, scam artist bilks woman out of nearly $28,000News Story
Vivian Murphy thought back to that heart-stopping moment when the voice on the phone proclaimed her the winner of a $1.5 million sweepstakes prize. For decades, Murphy, 85, had been a huge fan of Publishers Clearing House, the peddler of magazine subscriptions and household items widely known for TV commercials of winners dissolving into happy tears when presented with a gargantuan check. She entered nearly every drawing in the company's 50-year history, during which lucky winners have receiv
May 15, 2018, 8:12 am - Lottery News

The man who cracked the lotteryNews Story
Crime story: A recounting of the biggest lottery scandal in history The file landed on Rob Sand's desk with something less than a thud. Despite holding the contents of an investigation still open after more than two years, the file was barely half an inch thick. Happy birthday, his boss said. It was not Rob Sand's birthday. His boss, an Iowa deputy attorney general named Thomas H. Miller, was retiring in July 2014 after nearly three decades of prosecuting everything from murder to fraud. H
May 3, 2018, 2:49 pm - Lottery News

N.J. man charged in $10K lottery scam on 84-year-old womanNews Story
A New Jersey man tricked an 84-year-old woman into handing over more than $10,000 after telling her she won a lottery, but needed to pay the taxes on the winnings in advance, authorities said. Earl Alton Smith, 40, convinced the Canandaigua, New York, resident to give him a $5,000 check and one totaling $5,500 in October, New York State Police said in a statement. Smith was arrested by Port Authority police on Wednesday at Newark Liberty International Airport as he was about to board a pl
May 1, 2018, 9:23 am - Lottery News

Iowa Lottery wins International Gaming-Compliance award for work in lottery rigging investigationNews Story
Long-running case culminated in 2017 guilty pleas from three men The Iowa Lottery has won an international gaming-compliance award for its work in the long-running lottery jackpot investigation that uncovered fraud against U.S. lotteries and resulted in guilty pleas from three men. GamblingCompliance on Wednesday named the Iowa Lottery its 2018 recipient for outstanding achievement in compliance. The organization's annual awards that recognize excellence in 11 categories focused on regulat
Apr 19, 2018, 10:29 am - Lottery News

Infamous lottery scammer says US computerized lottery drawings remain fatally flawedNews Story
Eddie Tipton warned them. As the head of IT at the Multi-State Lottery Association, Tipton pulled aside his boss and told him the computer software that randomly selected the winning numbers for million-dollar games in as many as 17 states had a terrible flaw. It wasn't really random. Though his boss listened, Tipton told state investigators that other officials with the nation's chief lottery system did not. They told him to fix it, then moved on. A disgruntled Tipton made some upda
Mar 19, 2018, 8:32 am - Lottery News

How a gaming geek with a checkered past pulled off the biggest lottery scam in U.S. historyNews Story
12-15-18-29-38-41. Eddie Tipton jotted down the numbers on a yellow sticky note as he sat at his desk in Urbandale more than a decade ago. Around him were more sticky notes filled with number sets that he carefully wrote down as they spun up on his computer screen. The numbers were generated by a cryptic two-line software code Tipton had planted in his employer's computer system at the Multi-State Lottery Association. The office building was virtually empty as Tipton ran test after test
Mar 16, 2018, 7:48 am - Lottery News

More millennials than seniors losing money to scamsNews Story
Forget the clich of the vulnerable senior citizen falling victim to scammers a larger share of young people reported that they lost money to fraud than older individuals did in 2017. Among consumers ages 20 to 29, 40% of those who made fraud complaints to the Federal Trade Commission lost money, compared with just 18% of those who were ages 70 and older, according to an annual report from the federal agency released Thursday. The report examined consumer complaints made to the FTC in 2017.
Mar 4, 2018, 10:12 pm - Lottery News

Lottery scammer rigged more drawings than first thought, records showNews Story
The computer program that a former lottery security official used to rig drawings worth millions of dollars in Iowa and other states was more expansive than investigators first discovered, court records filed last week show. Eddie Tipton, a former employee of the Multi-State Lottery Association (MUSL) in Clive, wrote the code to allow him to predict the randomly drawn numbers of multimillion-dollar jackpots in as many as 17 states and claim the cash prizes. The code remained active and und
Feb 19, 2018, 6:03 pm - Lottery News

Georgia Senate passes bill that would give lottery winners anonymityNews Story
A proposal that would allow Georgia lottery winners to remain anonymous took an important step forward Monday. The state Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill that allows any Georgian who wins more than $250,000 in a lottery to keep their name from being disclosed. The bill's proponents have said eight states have laws that allow winners partial or complete anonymity. The legislation now goes to the state House of Representatives. The lawmakers who drafted Senate Bill 331 said the legislatio
Feb 6, 2018, 8:33 am - Lottery News