The New York Post joined other national outlets in reporting on the Texas lottery this week, and included an oft-repeated misnomer about the legality of the scheme to rig the jackpot.
Cribbing the Wall Street Journal, the Post quotes the alleged mastermind behind the event as saying, “And the best part? … It’s all perfectly legal.” The article continues, “Technically, it was.”
No, technically, it wasn’t.
There appears to be considerable confusion about what is and is not permissible when it comes to playing the lottery in Texas, particularly regarding the bulk purchase of lottery tickets by four online lottery ticket resellers in April 2023.
Let’s start at the top: Texas law does not permit the purchase of lottery tickets over the phone or online. In fact, there is a prohibition on selling tickets over the phone.
Although the purchases in April 2023 were not made over the internet, all four locations where tickets were printed en masse were linked to online lottery ticket resellers. These locations would not have existed, and would not have had the necessary equipment to carry off the printing, if state law had been correctly interpreted and enforced by the Texas Lottery.
The next problem is the “permission” that was granted for the bulk purchase. In testimony before senators, former Texas Lottery Commission Executive Director Gary Grief was named as having given permission to pull off the task.
A state bureaucrat stating that something is permissible does not make it legal, and ignorance of the law is not a defense.
Texas lottery tickets are intended to be sold in storefronts where commerce is occurring. In at least two of the locations where millions of tickets were printed, no commerce was taking place.
The location where the winning ticket was sold is reported to have beer koozies on fold-out tables for sale, but that’s as thin a defense as it sounds.
It is not legal for children to purchase lottery tickets in the state, but according to a video released by the New York Times, children were printing tickets at one location south of Austin connected to Lottery.com.
Lottery rules do not permit the use of non-lottery technology in conjunction with purchasing tickets. However, as can be seen in the Times’ video, phones or iPads were apparently used to display QR codes that were scanned at lottery terminals to process tickets for the drawing.
As it turns out, according to a recently filed lawsuit, the Texas Lottery Commission and its vendor, IGT, were supplying lottery ticket resellers with machines that they were using to develop QR technology to streamline their operations.
In the case of the April 2023 event, things were so streamlined that children could be used to execute the sophisticated scheme.
What about the bulk purchasing?
Government Code Section 466.307 states that a person commits an offense if they intentionally or knowingly influence or attempt to influence the selection of the winner of a lottery game.
Given the amount of money at stake in this drawing (more than $10,000), this is a second-degree felony.
Augmenting the odds of winning is another act prohibited by state statute, and that’s precisely what takes place when nearly every number combination is bought.
Of course, Texas lawmakers, including the very vocal State Sen. Paul Bettencourt (R-Houston), have suggested that in the case of this jackpot, we have a “clear case of money laundering.”
If the purchase of this jackpot was made with ill-gotten gains, as has been alleged, then Bettencourt will be justified in his assertion.
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