The international lottery vendor, Intralot, has appointed Rich Wheeler, an industry insider and former lottery ticket reseller executive, as interim CEO of its U.S. subsidiary.
Wheeler has several connections to the Texas lottery, but most notably, he is linked to the $95 million jackpot controversy as he served as president of Lottery Now and Mido Lotto, the reseller behind the Hooked on MT location where the winning ticket was purchased.
His appointment comes after a legislative session in which fallout from a syndicate’s use of resellers, including Wheeler’s, to purchase nearly every lottery ticket in the April 2023 Lotto Texas drawing, triggered a sweeping crackdown on online lottery ticket sellers and led to the abolition of the Texas Lottery Commission. Oversight of the lottery was transferred to the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation.
Before joining Intralot’s top ranks, Wheeler helped build a prominent lottery ticket reselling platform. As co‑founder and president of Lottery Now, he led the company behind the Mido Lotto app, a digital reseller that enabled customers to buy lottery tickets on their phones via a network of licensed retailers.
The start of Wheeler’s tenure at Lottery Now, which was on the leading edge of app‑driven ticket sales in Texas, coincided with the tail end of his employment with lottery vendor Camelot
In 2014, Camelot “assisted” the Texas Lottery to identify “opportunities to enhance performance.” Immediately following this review, Gary Grief, the now-indicted former executive director of the Texas Lottery, led his agency on a legislatively unsanctioned push to expand the lottery via ticket resellers.
The Camelot review of the Texas Lottery, which was jointly conducted with IGT according to TLC annual reviews, came at the tail end of Wheeler’s time with Camelot and his start at IGT, the state’s current lottery vendor responsible for terminal deployment.
In 2023, TLC directed surges of additional machines to reseller‑linked locations, including Hooked on MT, according to TLC records and legislative hearings. These additional machines played a critical role in facilitating the bulk purchase of tickets.
Legal filings highlighted the front-running by the TLC and IGT of machines to “one retailer with low sales.” Although the specific retailer is not mentioned, according to TLC records, one reseller/retail location matching this description was ahead of the game, receiving machines as the jackpot grew: Hooked on MT.
Like other resellers, Hooked began with a couple of machines. However, in March, a month before the location would sell the winning ticket, it began installing additional machines. Six machines were delivered on March 23. Four more followed on March 30 and two more on April 19, 2023.
According to his LinkedIn profile, a month after the $95 million jackpot, Wheeler left Lottery Now and joined Intralot.
Gary Grief retired from the Texas Lottery Commission six months later.
The $95 million jackpot scandal triggered a political firestorm in Austin. Lawmakers and watchdogs accused Grief and the Texas Lottery Commission of ushering in an exploitable loophole by encouraging the growth of online ticket resellers.
In hearings and reports, critics argued that the commission had failed to protect regular players from a system that could be gamed by well‑financed syndicates operating through resellers like Wheeler’s.
During the legislative session, lawmakers moved to ban online resellers, abolish the Texas Lottery Commission, and place the lottery itself on a short leash with an expedited Sunset Review process. Also amended was the procurement process for servicing the state’s lottery.
IGT, which has been the state’s lottery vendor since its inception, is currently operating the lottery on a two-year extension. A Request for Proposal, which could see IGT retain or lose one of its most lucrative clients, is set to be issued soon.
Intralot is one of a handful of large multinational vendors that dominate the U.S. state‑lottery market, along with the aforementioned IGT, Camelot, and Scientific Games.
