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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/06/us/texas-lottery-system-investigation.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c&pvid=06724310-3E2C-4610-9E30-336E1426C639
 

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2 Texas Lottery Wins Prompt Investigations and Stir Public Outrage

 

One jackpot winner spent $25 million on nearly every possible number combination, while another bought tickets through a third-party app.

March 6, 2025

 

The unusual circumstances surrounding two of the largest Lottery jackpots in Texas history have touched off a furious debate about the unorthodox methods used to snag the prizes and have led the governor and attorney general to announce investigations.

On April 22, 2023, someone won a $95 million Lotto Texas jackpot by spending $25 million to buy nearly every possible number combination in the draw. The winner, identified only as a business entity called Rook TX, of Scotch Plains, N.J., ended up claiming the lump-sum payment of $57,804,000 before taxes.

Then, on Feb. 17, someone won an $83.5 million Lotto Texas jackpot by ordering tickets online through Jackpocket, a third-party app owned by DraftKings. Jackpocket also owned the store in Austin that printed the winning ticket. It sold board games in front and had dozens of lottery terminals behind a wall in the back.

Can you buy millions of lottery combinations?

In early 2023, as the jackpot in Lotto Texas ballooned over months without a winner, someone figured out a way to almost guarantee a win, according to Ryan Mindell, executive director of the Texas Lottery Commission.

In the run-up to the drawing, the person or persons — it is not clear how many were involved — worked with four retailers in Texas to order a “significant” number of lottery terminals, enough to pump out roughly 25 million tickets and cover nearly every possible number combination, Mr. Mindell said.

Then, in the three days leading up to the drawing, people went to the stores and entered millions of number combinations using QR codes that had been loaded onto iPads, Mr. Mindell said. The Texas Lottery app allows customers to generate QR codes that can be scanned at participating retailers to generate tickets.

The operation caused a giant spike in sales, with about 27 million tickets sold in less than 72 hours, compared to about 2 million in a typical Lotto Texas drawing, Mr. Mindell said.

“I remember waking up that Thursday morning and seeing the sales numbers and thinking, ‘What the hell is happening?’” he said.

One of the tickets contained the winning combination — 3-5-18-29-30-52 — for the $95 million jackpot, the third-largest in Lotto Texas history. Officials have not disclosed who was behind Rook TX, the entity that claimed the prize. Texas law allows those who claim Lottery prizes of $1 million or more to remain anonymous.

The operation — which The Houston Chronicle has helped to expose through extensive investigative reporting — touched off outrage at a hearing in the State Senate last month.

“This is probably the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on the State of Texas by any group,” Senator Paul Bettencourt said at the hearing. “We gave up, probably on a fraudulent win, $57.7 million.”

Mr. Mindell said that the Lottery had taken steps to thwart similar “bulk-buying” operations by limiting the number of terminals that retailers could order in a short period and capping the number of tickets each terminal can print per drawing.

“Generally speaking, if one person had a lot of money and wanted to buy as many tickets as they wanted, that doesn’t violate the law,” he said. But he added: “The perception of the fairness of the game is significantly hurt.”

A quiet store with dozens of lottery terminals.

On Feb. 17, a buyer won an $83.5 million jackpot, also one of the largest in Lotto Texas history, by using Jackpocket. The buyer was a Texas customer who had ordered 10 entries for the draw, spending a total of $20, according to Jackpocket.

The app is one of a number of third-party companies known as courier services, which allow customers to order online without physically entering a store.

A day after the win, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick released a video of his visit to Winners Corner in Austin, the store that had sold the winning ticket through Jackpocket.

He was not pleased with what he saw: He noted that the store, which was also owned by Jackpocket, kept a large number of lottery terminals in the back, hidden from public view. In addition to lottery tickets, the store appeared to sell mostly board games, he said.

“We’re not suggesting anything illegal, but this is not the way the Lottery was designed to operate,” Mr. Patrick said in the video. “It was designed to operate by someone coming into a store, giving someone cash and getting a ticket back — not for machines behind walls, and not from a courier service and a retailer all being connected.”

The store, a licensed lottery retailer, has for years been the top-selling lottery retailer in Texas, Mr. Mindell said.

Texas officials say both wins have shaken public confidence in the Lottery.

On Feb. 24, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas orderedstate law enforcement officials to investigate both wins. “Texans must be able to trust in our state’s lottery system and know that the lottery is conducted with integrity and lawfully,” he said.

That same day, the Texas Lottery announced that it was moving to ban courier services like Jackpocket, and that it would revoke the license of any lottery retailer that worked with one.

Two days later, Attorney General Ken Paxton announced his own investigation into what he called “suspicious and potentially illegal lottery ‘winnings.’”

“Texas citizens deserve far better than bad actors getting rich off of a lottery system that is open to exploitation, and we will hold anyone who engages in illegal activity accountable,” he said.

Peter Sullivan, senior vice president of lottery at DraftKings, said in a statement that Jackpocket would suspend operations in accordance with Texas Lottery policy. But he noted that the app had operated in Texas since 2019 with “a proven track record of compliance and commitment to responsible gaming,” and had complied with guidance from the Texas Lottery Commission.

He said that the company hoped to work with policymakers to craft rules that would allow courier services to resume operations. Jackpocket, he said, had driven over $550 million in lottery ticket sales in Texas, helping to generate vital revenue for public education.

 

  • Haha 1
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Posted
8 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

How is buying all the combinations fraud? That's just a poorly planned lottery. 

 

How do you do it without getting repeats?

  • Hook 'Em 1
Posted (edited)
6 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

You can pick your number. 

 

You can't pick 57 million different combinations. But I guess a computer program with enough kiosks could do it. I don't know if it needs to print them out, though.

Edited by Bevo
Posted
2 minutes ago, Bevo said:

 

You can't pick 57 million different combinations. But I guess a computer program with enough kiosks could do it. I don't know if it needs to print them out, though.

Read the article. It describes how they did it. 

  • Haha 3
Posted

Team whoever ran the #s and realized that the Texas Lotto's math was shit and that they could make a killing off of it. Shouldn't be illegal - opportunistic capitalism. 

 

I also have a business degree from SMU so your MMV. 

  • Hook 'Em 2
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Posted
1 hour ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

If you spend 25 million on lotto tickets, can you count that as an expense on your income taxes?

It's a write-off for them.  All these big companies, they write off everything!

  • Hook 'Em 4
  • Haha 3
Posted

This is like that movie with Bryan Cranston where him and his wife gamed the lottery but they did it by hand instead of using this computer bullshit.

This TX Lotto case doesn’t sound illegal, just “frowned upon” since the laws are so stupid to allow shit like this to happen in the first place. 

  • Hook 'Em 1
Posted
58 minutes ago, Tailgate said:

Buying all the combinations is not a new concept, been successfully done before. 

The issue is that to do it, you physically need the paper and ink and stuff ready beforehand, which is kinda a conspiracy. If you just tried this randomly you could never pull it off. If required coordination at many levels which is the problem.

Posted
2 hours ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

If you spend 25 million on lotto tickets, can you count that as an expense on your income taxes?

Just get it back in a school voucher.

  • Haha 3
Posted
5 hours ago, Dahobbs said:

How is buying all the combinations fraud? That's just a poorly planned lottery. 

They violated the terms that ticket sellers are bound to follow with the expressed help of the Texas Lottery Commision

Posted
5 hours ago, BearMace said:

The issue is that to do it, you physically need the paper and ink and stuff ready beforehand, which is kinda a conspiracy. If you just tried this randomly you could never pull it off. If required coordination at many levels which is the problem.

Yeah I was thinking of the 1992 Virginia lottery that was won by the same concept. Some math wiz in Australia schemed it. After looking back at it sounds like laws were changed to try and prevent it.

  • Like 1
Posted

I am completely missing what the problem is with buying a winning ticket through Jackpocket.

From a consumer point of view, there isn't any issue.  If they are saying it's unfair to convenience stores selling tickets, personally don't care.

Posted
11 hours ago, MrBig said:

This is like that movie with Bryan Cranston where him and his wife gamed the lottery but they did it by hand instead of using this computer bullshit.

This TX Lotto case doesn’t sound illegal, just “frowned upon” since the laws are so stupid to allow shit like this to happen in the first place. 

 

11 hours ago, Captainant said:

Brian Cranston made a movie about this exact thing, "Jerry and Marge go large" in 2022

Yes, it's a great read

  • Hook 'Em 2
Posted
14 hours ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

If you spend 25 million on lotto tickets, can you count that as an expense on your income taxes?

I assume it’s like traditional forms of gambling where your loses can be deducted from your winnings.

Also, I really don’t understand the outrage. I’ve seen this reported several times and watched Patrick and other elected officials go on rants about it, and I still fail to understand the problem. Especially with regard to the guy who only spent $20. How does it matter where he bought them? That jack pocket place doesn’t then pick the winning combination. 

  • Hook 'Em 2
Posted
1 hour ago, AbeFroman said:

I am completely missing what the problem is with buying a winning ticket through Jackpocket.

From a consumer point of view, there isn't any issue.  If they are saying it's unfair to convenience stores selling tickets, personally don't care.

I guess that’s it? The place that sells the ticket get a percentage of the win, I think? But I still don’t see how that’s a problem. That’s their entire business model. Gas stations have a broader business model to begin with, but there isn’t anything stopping them from getting similar machines

  • Like 1
Posted
14 hours ago, MrBig said:

This is like that movie with Bryan Cranston where him and his wife gamed the lottery but they did it by hand instead of using this computer bullshit.

This TX Lotto case doesn’t sound illegal, just “frowned upon” since the laws are so stupid to allow shit like this to happen in the first place. 

Like masturbating on an airplane 

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Posted
18 hours ago, Dnaguy said:

The winner, identified only as a business entity called Rook TX, of Scotch Plains, N.J., ended up claiming the lump-sum payment of $57,804,000 before taxes.

Spend $25 million on tickets. Win 58 million before taxes.  Are there avenues for that “business” to avoid or minimize tax on the income (or is it revenue?) How much was spent on acquiring the tickets, I addition to the cost of the tickets?  And it only worked because they didn’t have a split pot. 

Posted (edited)
14 hours ago, AbeFroman said:

I am completely missing what the problem is with buying a winning ticket through Jackpocket.

From a consumer point of view, there isn't any issue.  If they are saying it's unfair to convenience stores selling tickets, personally don't care.

I think to me the issue is that if online purchases necessitate streamlining of processes and potentially even bypassing printing of physical tickets, it makes it easy for "businesses" or whatever you would like to call them coming together and doing the buy every combination thing with ease and then then player trust erodes and the games go away altogether because people slowly stop buying tickets.

But the fact that it's Patrick who would sell Texas to Elon for tree fiddy and look the other way as he destroys Boca Chica and Bastrop who recognizes that it probably needs (gasp) regulation is hilarious.

Edited by BearMace
Posted (edited)

From what i can tell, the companies wait until jackpot gets to certain size, then buy every combination using a front store guaranteeing no individual can claim the full prize. 


 

Unfortunately, it seems the odds to win last years $95 million Lotto Texas jackpot were stacked against Texans more than we could imagine.

Though on paper, a Colleyville resident took home the grand prize, an investigation from The Watchdog and Dallas Morning News found that an international syndicate spent almost $26 million to purchase every possible numeric combination for Lotto Texas.

The winning ticket was purchased at a store in Colleyville called “Hooked on MT,” which purportedly promotes fishing in Montana.  There was nothing on the storefront that indicated lottery tickets were sold there.

 

https://www.audacy.com/jackontheweb/latest/syndicate-buys-every-numeric-combination-for-lotto-texas

Edited by ChickenSandwich

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