Tipton was sentenced to ten years in prison back in September following a high-profile trial into whether he had bought and then tried to cash in a Hot Lotto ticket. As the security director of the Multi-State Lottery Association (MUSL), Tipton was not allowed to participate in state or inter-state lottery games and he was given the maximum sentence after it emerged that he had fixed the numbers by installing a rootkit on the lottery operator’s system, whilst also trying to cover his tracks by tampering with the security camera.
An appeal was immediately filed by defence attorney Dean Stowers, but authorities have since filed new charges against Tipton relating to winning tickets sold in Colorado, Wisconsin and, now, Oklahoma. Redburn is concerned that the person who claimed the prize came from a different state, where Tipton is known to have had associates, such as Robert Rhodes, who was also charged in the first Hot Lotto case earlier this year.
“At the time we sent them this information and we reviewed it, this person that won that $1.2 million prize was from Texas,” Redburn told reporters. “We told them they should probably check that out since he’s an out-of-state winner.”
Kyle Conn, the owner of a construction company in Hemphill, Texas, came forward in December 2011 to collect the $1.2 million prize. In a press release at the time, Conn said that he had been in Oklahoma for work. He picked his own numbers instead of buying a randomly-generated ticket.
Redburn has not commented further on any possible link between Conn and Tipton, but has insisted that security is now considerably tighter than it was a few years ago in the wake of the fraud trial. “All the programming has been redone and rectified by international gaming lab certification companies,” he explained. “All that’s been cleaned up.”
