Should lottery winners’ names be withheld for privacy and safety, or should they be released to promote sales, remove public suspicion and minimize cheating? Different states handle the dilemma in different ways.
For example, California, Florida and Tennessee, the three states with winners in the recent record $1.6 billion Powerball drawing, require winners to disclose their names. Most states that play the game have the same rule. However, Delaware, Kansas, Maryland, North Dakota, Ohio and South Carolina let winners remain anonymous. Last year Arizona lawmakers approved a bill that protects lottery winners’ identities for 90 days after they claim their prizes.
North Carolina and New York require lottery winners to be named; legislation that would hide their identity failed in the past few years. In 2013, New Jersey the legislature passed a bill requiring a one-year delay in releasing lottery winners’ names but it was vetoed by Governor Chris Christie who said it could reduce lottery sales by limiting marketing and dampening public excitement when winners are announced. Similar measures also have been introduced in Pennsylvania and Texas.
Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont, among others, let winners hide their identities behind a trust, allowing a trustee to collect the prize. And in Illinois and Oregon, where winners must be named, if they can demonstrate that revealing their identity would subject them to a high risk of harm, they can remain anonymous.
Illinois attorney Andrew Stoltmann, who has represented lottery winners, said they “get a big old target painted on their backs” when their names are released, and “they get harassed and harangued into some horrifically bad investments.” He said requiring winners to reveal their identities is like “throwing meat into a shark-infested ocean.”
However, others contend allowing winners’ names to remain secret can make the public suspicious and also allow cheating to go undetected. Former Florida Lottery attorney Dan Russell said anonymity “throws a layer of assistance to someone who wants to rig a drawing. It is of no value to those of us who want the system to operate in a clean manner. That is absolutely the wrong idea.”
The risk posed by anonymous winners was revealed by the case of Eddie Tipton, a computer expert and former security director of the Multi-State Lottery Association, or MUSL, and figured out how to rig number-generating computers to pick particular sets of numbers in numerous games over several years, according to Iowa prosecutors. Tipton and his associates cashed in tickets in Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and Wisconsin, netting more than $2.6 million in payouts. In July Tipton was convicted of fraud for attempting to claim a $16.5 million Hot Lotto jackpot in Iowa. He is free while appealing the conviction and a 10-year prison sentence. Tipton also faces charges additional charges in Iowa related to the other four states. Iowa Lottery Chief Executive Officer Terry Rich said the law requiring winners’ names be made public was “the layer of security he couldn’t break.”
Iowa state Rep. Bobby Kaufmann, chairman of the House Government Oversight Committee, said the panel will investigate the matter and research how to prevent similar fraud from happening in the future. Tipton’s attorney, Dean Stowers, said his client may be willing to cooperate with the legislative inquiry if he is granted immunity from prosecution. “Under the right circumstances, I think he’d be happy to testify and share whatever information he may have with the legislature. But nobody has contacted me about that,” Stowers said.
Gary Grief, chairman of the Powerball committee for MUSL, said disclosing winners’ names is “a positive thing to reinforce to players that real people do win and that those real people don’t work for the lottery or aren’t involved with lottery.”
