Eddie Tipton, convicted in 2017 of rigging lottery outcomes in multiple U.S. states, has been released on parole after serving fewer than five years of a maximum 25-year prison sentence. The former security chief of the Multi-State Lottery Association, who confessed to his crimes at trial, now claims he’s innocent.
Tipton rigged multiple computerized lottery drawings in several states, then shared millions in jackpots with accomplices, who included his brother. In a plea deal, he agreed to pay $2.2 million in restitution for those crimes to the states in which he rigged the drawings, including Colorado, Oklahoma, Wisconsin and Kansas. The amount was later reduced to $1.65 million, according to the Lottery Post. Tipton owes nothing in Iowa, where charges were filed, because the state did not pay out on the winning Hot Lotto ticket he attempted to redeem in December 2010.
Tipton worked at an Urbandale, Iowa, organization that provided random number drawing computers to several lottery states. Investigators said he installed code on lottery computers that allowed him to predict the winning numbers on three days of the year.
Tipton acknowledged his guilt at trial, explaining he “wrote software that included code that allowed me to understand or technically predict winning numbers, and I gave those numbers to other individuals who then won the lottery and shared the winnings with me.”
But in a January 2020 lawsuit, he said he was coerced into pleading guilty and said Iowa had no authority to charge him for restitution in states beyond its jurisdiction.
In a lawsuit, he called his sentence “cruel and unusual because it has been applied to an actually innocent person simply to see that he is charged with a crime.” The Iowa Board of Parole later approved his release, and Tipton attempted to halt all restitution pending a new trial. It is currently scheduled for August, until then, he will serve his parole in Texas.
Terry Rich, who was CEO of the Iowa Lottery at the time of the scandal, told the Iowa Capital Dispatch said he has reached “closure” in the matter, despite Tipton’s turnabout.
“In any major crime—whether it’s murder, assault or robbery—most people don’t get closure. My bottom line was that we would get closure with him admitting that it happened, and that all three defendants confessed and said how they did it. That was my bottom line. The number of years in the sentence—I left that to the court and for the parole board to decide, and I am fine with those decisions.”
CBS Denver reported that Tipton still has parole to complete in Wisconsin, which would end in September 2026. If he hasn’t paid his full restitution by then, a judge could order him back to prison there, according to information provided by Wisconsin officials to Iowa Auditor Rob Sand, who was an assistant attorney general who prosecuted Tipton’s case.
“Eddie may be done with this term, but under his plea agreement, he needs to get restitution paid to avoid serving more time in Wisconsin. I wish him luck in getting that done,” Sand said.
Tipton says he’s broke, and to date has only paid $2,000 in restitution. It’s not clear whether he could be returned to prison if he hasn’t paid restitution in Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma.
His brother, Tommy Tipton, was sentenced to 75 days in jail in Texas and was ordered to pay a portion of the restitution in some states.
Iowa Assistant Attorney General William Hill asked a judge in November to dismiss Tipton’s case, saying it is barred by the statute of limitations and is frivolous. Hill also said by filing the lawsuit Tipton is violating the terms of his plea agreements and that the violation “provides the opportunity for all jurisdictions to re-initiate criminal charges against him.
