Today is Monday, July 20th, 2020.

On this day in 2015, Eddie Tipton was found guilty of rigging the lottery in Iowa.

He'd used his position inside the industry to cheat the system and get rich quick

until he made a mistake and the scheme fell apart.

Welcome to today in true Crime, a parcast original. Today we're

covering the conviction of Eddie Tipton, a former information security

director for the multiistate Lottery Association, who rigged the lottery

system for years. Let's go back to a Des Moines, Iowa courtroom on the morning of Monday, July 20th, 2015. It was being called the biggest lottery scam ever.

A 2010 jackpot worth over 14 million dollars had been fraudulently won prosecutors believed and

52 year old Eddie Tipton was at the center of it all. As the jury filed into the courtroom, tipped and scanned their faces.

Did they believe him?

The trial had lasted a week, and up until this final moment it could still go either way. Beyond the courthouse,

local media watched the case with fascination. It seemed so improbable that someone could rig the lottery.

Adam Scott Want, an expert in digital forensics and

cybersecurity from John Jay College of Criminal Justice,

pointed out that the prosecution was faced

with the curious task of proving their argument

without any actual evidence linking Tipton to the crime.

The heart of the case was a piece of surveillance footage taken at the moment the winning ticket

was purchased.

The man who bought the ticket was hooded, which meant his face was all was Iowa Assistant District Attorney Rob Sand argued that it belonged to Eddie Tipton.

As an employee for the Multiststate lottery association, or MUSL, Tipton was prohibited from buying lottery tickets at all.

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