Geiger counter that measured radia-
tion in the surrounding air. The ra-
diation reading was plugged into an
algorithm to come up with the win-
ning lottery numbers.
Eddie’s scheme was to limit the
random selection process as much
as possible. His code kicked in only if
the coming drawing fulfilled a narrow
set of circumstances. It had to be on
a Wednesday or a Saturday evening,
and one of three dates in a non–leap
year: the 147th day of the year, the
327th day, or the 363rd day. Investi-
gators noticed those dates generally
fell around holidays—Memorial Day,
Thanksgiving, and Christmas—when
Eddie was often on vacation.If those criteria were satisfied,
the random-number generator was
diverted to a different track that didn’t
use the Geiger counter reading. In-
stead, the algorithm ran with a pre-
determined number, which restricted
the pool of potential winning num-
bers to a much smaller, predictable
set of options: Rather than millions of
possible winning combinations, there
would be only a few hundred.
The night before the first lottery
he rigged, a $4.8 million jackpot insomething that’s a little bit sneaky but
not illegal.” Investigators in Iowa now
had six tickets they figured were part
of a bigger scam. But the question re-
mained: How did it work?F
ortunately, the computers
used in the 2007 Wisconsin
Lottery jackpot were sitting in
storage. A computer expert, Sean
McLinden, unearthed some mali-
cious computer code. It hadn’t been
hidden; you just needed to know what
to look for.
“This,” says Wisconsin assistant at-
torney general David Maas, “was find-
ing the smoking gun.”
Eddie Tipton pleaded guilty, as did
his brother, Tommy. Now facing ten
years in prison, Eddie agreed to spill
his secrets, which lottery officials
hoped would help them safeguard the
games in the future. He explained that
the whole scheme had started fairly
innocently one day when he walked
past one of the accountants at the
Multi-State Lottery Association. “Hey,
did you put your secret numbers in
there?” the accountant teased Eddie.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you know, you can set num-
bers on any given day since you wrote
the software.”
“Just like a little seed that was
planted,” Eddie said. “And then dur-
ing one slow period, I tried it.”
To ensure that the winning num-
bers were generated randomly, the
computer took a reading from a“PLAY THESE NUMBERS,”
HE TOLD HIS BROTHER,
HANDING HIM A LIST.
“PLAY THEM ALL.”rd.com 115True Crime