Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - He Scammed The Lottery Out Of Millions - The Eddie Tipton story

Episode Date: February 2, 2025

Eddie Tipton attempted to scam the lottery out $24,000,000.

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Do that with Acrobat. Learn more at Adobe.com slash do that with Acrobat. This guy's about to try and scam the lottery out of $24 million. Now, his name is Eddie. He lives in Iowa, and he's a computer programmer, and he also works for the multi-state lottery association. And he's going to use this position there to enact this wild scam. See, Eddie is actually the director of security at the multi-state lottery association, and

part of his job involves designing the software that randomly picks the winning numbers for these lotteries. And so Eddie's been working in this job for like two years and then one day, everything changes. Because he's at work and he's chatting with a coworker and coworker is joking around and he asks Eddie if he's put his own secret winning numbers into the software. And Eddie is like, say what now? And co-worker's like, bro, you wrote the software so you can set the winning numbers. And Eddie's like, oh snap, that's right. I'm the one writing the software. I actually could rig this whole thing and win the lottery and make myself rich. And that is exactly what he's going to do.

So Eddie gets right to work and he starts writing code on the multi-state lottery association computer. And this code will basically help predict the winning numbers. Then one night he's working late in the office and there's no one else around. So he gets some of those yellow sticky notes and he starts writing down the different sets of possible winning numbers for this lottery that's about to happen all the way over. in Colorado. Now the jackpot for this lottery in Colorado is a big fat $4.8 million. So there's a lot on the line here. However, Eddie has a problem. He can't just roll over to Colorado and play the lottery himself.

He's an employee of the multi-state lottery association. It's against company policy for lottery employees to play the lottery. Plus, that would be very suspicious if a lottery employee won the jackpot. So then Eddie has to find someone to play it for him. And what does he do? Eddie recruits his brother, this guy, Tommy. And Tommy is a sheriff's deputy of all things. But Tommy also just happens to be taking a trip to Colorado soon because he's going to look for, and I'm not making this up, Bigfoot. Yes, Tommy is going several states away to hunt for the legendary mythical creature. I guess he's just into that kind of stuff. So anyway, Eddie hits Tommy up and he's like, hey, while you're out there in Colorado looking for Bigfoot, could you play a bunch of these lottery numbers I got? Because

one of them is going to win. And Tommy, he's like, I. Now, while Tommy's out there in Colorado, he doesn't actually find Bigfoot, Womp, Womp, but he does buy up a bunch of lotto tickets. And sure enough, when the time comes and they draw the winning lottery numbers, boom, one of Tommy's tickets wins. However, he doesn't actually win $4.8 million because some other people win too, so the winnings are split between him and some other random winners. Regardless, Tommy ends up getting a cash payout of nearly $570,000, and he goes and he splits it with Eddie. Not a bad payday. Oh, but Eddie's scam is not over yet. That was way too easy. So for the next 10 years, Eddie uses his magic software, and he gets the winning numbers, and he has another person, Tommy, or whoever else he's scamming with at the time.

He has that person go to other states and play their lottery and collect the winnings. And they win big. $22,000 in Kansas, $780,000 in Wisconsin, $900,000 in Oklahoma. Bro is raking it in. Until. One day, Eddie makes a big mistake. Because he walks into a convenience store and he buys one of the winning tickets himself. And you can see him here.

He's right there in the black hoodie. Look at all kinds of shady. And also, this particular lottery he's playing, this ain't no regular lottery. This is the hot lotto, which has a massive jackpot of $16.5 million. So, of course, he buys the tickets and he picks the numbers. And the ones he picked end up being the winner. And bam, he wins. the jackpot. But again, there's a problem. He still can't collect it himself. He's got to go find

someone else who can. Meanwhile, the lottery commission, they know someone won. They know someone bought the winning ticket. They just don't know who. So they're just waiting on whoever to come forward and claim this prize money. And they're like going on TV and they're like making announcements. Well, it's been almost a month since we had announced that we had a hot lot of 16.5 million dollar hot lotto winner. The Iowa lottery has been looking and asking for everyone to please check their tickets. So Eddie, he's got to collect this money. So he hits up his friend in Texas, this guy, Robert. And Robert, he's been already helping him with this lotto scam. And Eddie asked Robert to help him figure out how to collect this $16.5 million jackpot he just won. So Robert hits up a guy in Canada

that he knows. And he asks him to call into Iowa and claim the prize. So then 10 months after the winning numbers were announced, this random guy from Canada calls into Iowa claiming he's got the winning lottery ticket. But he says that he's too sick to go there in person and that they'll just have to give him the winnings. And the lottery commission, they're like, yeah, sure, buddy. And they start asking him questions about the day he bought the ticket. Like, what clothing were you wearing that day? because they're skeptical and they're trying to pick his story apart. And of course, guy from Canada describes some clothing,

but that description doesn't match the surveillance footage the lottery commission has of the man buying the ticket. So the commission is like, nah, bro, you're not the winner. Stay in Canada. So then Robert has to try something different, and he has a couple of lawyers come forward to claim the prize. And when these lawyers go to the lottery commission,

they're like, we're here on behalf of our client, and our client wants to remain anonymous. Ladies and gentlemen, we have the winning ticket, but we don't have the person nor all of the background information about this winning ticket. And again, the lottery commission gets very suspicious, especially because in Iowa, the identity of any given lottery winner is always made public. So the lottery commission is like, nah, and they don't pay out the winnings. Ladies and gentlemen, the hot lotto jackpot claim has been withdrawn. I mean, they know something shady is going on. So instead, they see.

start looking into this anonymous winner who allegedly sent his lawyers. And eventually they ask the police to get involved. So then police get involved. And even they are having a hard time figuring this out. But they go and they check out the surveillance footage from the convenience store where the winning lottery ticket was bought. Now obviously from this footage, you can see a man in a black hoodie, but you can't identify who that is. Like the quality is just trash. So police, they go and they release this footage to the public.

And they ask the public to help them identify the guy who bought the winning lottery ticket. So then, finally, after investigating this for nearly four years, Kaboom, police get a tip. And it's someone telling them that the person in the video is a guy they know named Eddie. And it's presumed that whoever tipped the police off were some of Eddie's co-workers. And you can't really see him in the surveillance footage, but they could tell it was him by his voice. So then eventually, bam, police arrest Eddie. Here's his mugshot.

And then, bam, they arrest his bigfoot hunting ass brother Tommy, too. Here's his mugshot. And also, bam, they arrest Robert. Here's his mugshot. And it's estimated that over 10 years, Eddie and these other guys tried to scam $24 million in lottery winnings, making this the biggest lottery scam in U.S. history. So anyway, Tommy gets 75 days in prison.

Robert gets six months of home confinement because he testified against the others, while Eddie, the mastermind, he gets 25 years in prison. Although ultimately, Eddie only end up serving five years and now he's out on parole. Sounds like it was worth it. And a huge shout out to leonardo.a.i for sponsoring this video. If you want to make really cool art for your videos or just for your life like this or like this, then sign up for leonardo. AI.