Has Anyone Ever Read this story? I found it the other day while doing a search! I am not really sure of the Date it was published but I think it was published in March 1998 according to the URL.
Makes you wonder about those scratch tickets hey? Like how some people said when they won on a scratch ticket the clerk would say it was already cashed in! Hmmmmmmm!
Killer said lottery cheated
Beck angry at demotion at work, too
http://www.recordonline.com/1998/03/03-08-98/lottki.htm
NEWINGTON, Conn. (AP) -- The accountant who gunned down four people at state lottery headquarters before killing himself had complained to newspapers months beforehand that lottery players were being cheated.
Matthew Beck, who worked for the lottery more than eight years, approached at least two newspaper reporters to interest them in recent changes at the lottery.
He claimed the Connecticut Lottery Corp. exaggerated potential winnings to spur ticket sales, and that store clerks were taking winning scratch tickets for themselves by cracking the computer system.
His discussions with The Day of New London and The Hartford Courant included his complaints of unfair treatment at work.
The Courant described him as frothing at the mouth and said his eyes were "wild," while The Day described him as "scruffy" in appearance.
Beck, 35, shot to death four of his bosses Friday, including one who was chased into a parking lot and shot as he reportedly begged for his life. As police approached, Beck put the pistol to his temple and fired.
Beck was described by friends and co-workers as a quiet, diligent worker who became mired in depression because of job problems.
He went years without a promotion, then filed a grievance in August one year after he was shifted from accounting to data processing work.
After taking a stress-related leave in October and undergoing treatment, he returned to work Feb. 25 when an arbitrator ruled he had taken on responsibilities outside his job description. Beck was waiting to see if he would be given back pay for the additional work. Prior to returning to work, Beck told reporters about alleged lottery scams.
"They need to increase revenues by $30 million and they're under a lot of pressure," Beck told The Day in January to explain why jackpots were being exaggerated.
In November, lottery officials admitted projected Lotto jackpots had been inflated for years by rounding sales projections to the nearest half-million-dollar figure. For example, if projections showed the prize would be $9.1 million, the figure would be rounded up to $9.5 million in advertising.
Otho Brown, the lottery president killed Friday in the parking lot, said that the practice had been stopped.
Beck also claimed that some store clerks had been cheating the system by "fishing" for instant winning tickets, The Courant said.
He told the newspaper that the clerks punched code numbers into lottery computers until they came up with the winning combination and then would take the cash.
A lottery spokesman yesterdayreferred specific questions about lottery operations and methods to Nicholas T. Manno, who has been appointed acting chief executive officer in place of Brown. Manno declined to comment yesterday.
Beck's own father described his son as "troubled" and authorities said he had attempted suicide at least twice before.
But Paul Davis, a friend of Beck's since elementary school, said Beck "never even got in an argument back in school."
"I never would have expected it from him," Davis said. "If I ever needed any help, I could always get it from Matt."
The two graduated together from Ledyard High School in 1980, stayed in touch and occasionally went hiking.
"He was the all-American guy. He was Mr. Clean-cut," said Herbert H. Vars Jr., a childhood friend who lives down the road from the Beck family home.
Beck, who ran cross country in high school, still liked to run and would wave as he passed Vars' home. But some friends and co-workers said he was angry over not being promoted and was seeking a transfer to another state agency without success.
"If I said hello to him, he would just turn and walk away," one resident told the New Haven Register. "He was out there."
Beck, who had recently taken to shaving his head and wearing a goatee, arrived to work Friday morning with a semiautomatic handgun and a butcher-style knife. He had driven in from Ledyard, where he had moved back in with his parents six months ago.
He first stabbed and shot Michael Logan, an information-services manager who first denied his grievance. He then walked into an adjacent area and shot Linda Mlynarczyk, the lottery's chief financial officer with whom he had recently discussed his new duties. He told her "bye bye" before firing three times, witnesses said.
He then shot Frederick Rubelmann III, a person he had once appealed to for help, before chasing down Brown in the parking lot.