Man Pleads Guilty to Manipulating Lottery Winning Tickets via Hacked Computer

[LASER_oneXM]

One of the biggest lottery scams in the history of the US is coming to a close as the mastermind behind the operation has pleaded guilty in an Iowa court, at the end of last month.

Eddie Tipton, 54, admitted to creating malware in the form of a DLL file, which he loaded on the secure computers of the Multi-State Lottery Association (MSLA), a company that runs lotteries in 33 states, but also in the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Tipton was able to do this because he served as the company's computer information security director in its Urbandale, Iowa headquarters, and was one of the five persons that had access to those computers, situated in the "draw room."

Tipton used a DLL to hijack RNG algorithm
According to officials, Tipton uploaded the DLL file on secure computers that were charged with randomly choosing winning tickets for MSLA's various draws.

These computers were housed in a secure room with 24-hour security camera surveillance, but prosecutors said Tipton was able to go around this inconvenience by altering the surveillance system so that cameras would record only one second for each minute.

Investigators suspect that this gave Tipton the time he needed to insert a USB thumb drive into MSLA's computer and upload a malicious DLL file.

Tipton used a network of intermediaries to cash in prizes
Once Tipton had this system in place, he recruited two friends to cash out winning tickets. The first was Tommy Tipton, 53, his brother, a former Texas magistrate judge and police officer; and Robert Rhodes, a Texas businessman and Tipton's former colleague at an IT company. These two cashed in winning tickets themselves but also recruited other intermediaries.

 

[frogboy]

Yikes busted big time, sucker.