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In 2023, professional bettors in Europe were trying to find an American partner to help pull off an audacious plan to buy up virtually every ticket ahead of just the right lottery draw in the United States.
Then something remarkable happened in Texas. Officials in Austin essentially blessed the rigging of their own state lottery.
“What we had was a criminal enterprise within our government,” said State Senator Bob Hall, a Republican investigating the caper.
In a state known for its aversion to government regulation, the successful manipulation of a Texas lottery has taken on deep meaning. The Texas Senate has held hearings. Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton ordered investigations. The Texas House zeroed out the funding for the state lottery in its budget this month.
Still, with their winnings in the tens of millions of dollars, the perpetrators remain very much unscathed. And as the unsavory details have come out — storefronts posing as retailers spitting out lottery tickets, texts between ticket printers and a former drug smuggler, a winner hiding behind a Delaware-based shell company — the escapade underscored a pervasive sense in Texas, and in America, that just about everything is rigged.
Just how the Texas lottery was fixed in 2023 has been explored by news outlets and in state capitol hearing rooms. But less understood is the key role of state regulators. The Times has unearthed new details and video evidence that underscore just how integral the state’s lottery commission was in helping to secure a jackpot.
