"Lucky Larry" Dawson must have smiled as he claimed a $9 million jackpot surrounded by his kids and grandkids in 2011. But five years after, the Iowa native has become the first plaintiff in litigation that threatens to cost state lotteries millions of dollars as an insider jackpot-rigging scandal.
According to Yahoo! News, A Des Moines law firm recently filed a lawsuit on Dawson's behalf asking him to announce that his Hot Lotto jackpot on May 2011 should have been nearly three times as big if the previous one has not been fixed. It's the first in what could be quite a few lawsuits filed by lottery players who said that they were ripped off playing games allegedly rigged by Eddie Tipton, which is a former security director of the Multi-State Lottery Association.
ABC NEWS claimed that the Iowa man's lawsuit claims that the jackpot should have rolled over and made a $25.5 million pool for the jackpot that he won months later. Instead, the jackpot resets to the Hot Lotto's base of $1 million prior to building up to the $9 million prize he got from the association.
The lawsuit seeks a judge declaring that Dawson was the winner of the additional $16.5 million, which makes up to $10 million in the lump sum cash option he'd take, including the interest. "He needs to be made whole. The entire integrity of the lottery run by this organization nationwide is at stake here," stated Dawson's attorney, Jerry Crawford, who didn't rule out filing additional lawsuits.
Moreover, the Iowa Lottery, named as a defendant alongside the lottery association, promised to fight for the claim, stating that Dawson "was paid the jackpot to which he was entitled." CEO Terry Rich even said,"It is impossible to rewrite history. No one can know what would have occurred in this case had any event in it been changed."
The association, which runs Powerball and includes 37 state and territorial lotteries,on the other hand, did not leave a comment regarding the claims. The Iowa Lottery didn't pay the jackpot allegedly fixed by Tipton after lawyers tried to explain on behalf of a trust refused to identify who purchased the ticket.
The money was then returned to 16 states that joined in Hot Lotto as an unclaimed prize. But the lawsuit calls this an improper financial hand-out that resulted from the states' incapability to work in a fair and secure game, as reported by The Big Story.
But the lawsuit accuses lax security measures, mentioning that the association's random number generators made by Tipton lacked fraud prevention capabilities which are available in other models. It also claimed that surveillance camera system for the draw room also repeatedly malfunctioned after its 2008 installation.
Meanwhile, reports are claiming thatTipton's lawyer Dean Stowers is currently claiming that the Iowa attorney general's office, which will defend the lottery, "walked into the lawsuit". The attorney added that it is keenly pursuing Tipton despite lacking evidence that he tampered with the computers.
