bought the winning ticket—the video
made that pretty clear. So did cell
phone records, which showed Eddie
was in town that day, not out of town
for the holidays as he had claimed. In-
vestigators believed he’d fixed the lot-
tery. But if the numbers are supposed
to be generated randomly, how did he
do it?
Based on his research, Sand theo-
rized that before the Hot Lotto jack-
pot, Eddie had managed to gain
access to one of the two computers
that select the winning numbers and
inserted a thumb drive containing a
string of coded instructions he’d writ-
ten. The clandestine software, called a
rootkit, allowed Eddie to restrict the pool
of numbers that could hit—and then it
deleted itself.
The prosecutor told the jury members
that they didn’t have to understand the
exact technology to convict Eddie. They
just had to realize the near-impossible
coincidence of the lottery security chief ’s
buying the winning ticket. After deliber-
ating for only five hours, the jury found
Eddie guilty. He appealed.
Then the case took a very strange turn.O
ne morning a few months after the
original trial, Sand’s office phone
rang. The call came from area code
281, in Texas, where Eddie grew up. The
caller said he’d seen an article in the
newspaper about Eddie’s conviction.
“Did y’all know,” the tipster asked, “that
Eddie’s brother Tommy Tipton won the
lottery, maybe about ten years back?”
Sand contacted Richard Rennison, a
special agent at the FBI office in Texas
City, Texas. Rennison said he remem-
bered the case well: In 2006, a man
named Tom Bargas had contacted local
law enforcement with a suspicious story.
Bargas owned 44 fireworks stands. Twice
a year—after the Fourth of July and New
Year’s—he handled enormous amounts of
cash. A man he knew, a local justice of the
peace, called Bargas around New Year’s
and said, “I got half a million in cash that
I want to swap with your money.”
What’s a justice of the peace whord.com 113True Crime