Prosecutors in Iowa claim that 51 year-old Eddie Raymond Tipton bought the successful $14.3 million entry for the draw on Wednesday 29th December 2010, despite his role as security director for MUSL forbidding him from playing. Over 500 pages of new evidence in the case were presented by the prosecution on Friday ahead of an expected start date of Monday 13th April, leading to the judge pushing back the trial three months to allow the defence to work through the material.
A new theory about the lottery ‘win’ was put forward last week by Assistant Iowa Attorney General Robert Sand, who suggested Tipton might have managed to install a programme on the lottery operator’s system, called a rootkit, which was able to influence the random number generator in his favour before self destructing. Tipton was allegedly seen on CCTV footage entering the ‘draw room’ on 20th November 2010, with evidence also suggesting that the camera had been tampered with, apparently only recording footage at a rate of one second per minute.
The ability to check for rootkits has been introduced alongside a raft of other measures designed to beef up security at the MUSL headquarters since the alleged incident.
The defence attempted to have this theory thrown out of court, but District Court Judge Jeffrey Farrell countered the motion. Tipton’s legal team claim that there were at least two other employees who accessed the draw room, whilst also suggesting that a man shown in video evidence from the QuickTrip shop at which the ticket was purchased could not be proved to be Tipton. However, a car belonging to Tipton was identified in the parking lot of the shop at the time.
The Hot Lotto case has gripped America since New York lawyer Crawford Shaw presented the winning ticket on behalf of an investment company based in Belize just before the cut off point for claims in December 2011. Shaw withdrew his claim a month later after refusing to disclose the identity of the claimant.
You can find the winning numbers from the two biggest American lotteries, Powerball and Mega Millions at the Latest Lottery Results section.
