A lottery winner has filed a lawsuit claiming he was cheated out of millions due to a massive alleged rigging scheme in Texas.
Jerry B. Reed won $7.5 million in Lotto Texas less than a month after a $95 million jackpot was claimed by a group called Rook TX in April 2023, local NBC affiliate KXAN reported. Reed says his winnings were drastically reduced because of an elaborate money laundering and game-rigging operation linked to that huge jackpot.
The lawsuit accuses the founders of lottery.com and Colossal Bets of orchestrating the scheme. According to court documents, the three men recruited both foreign and domestic bettors to buy every possible number combination for the Lotto Texas draw. They also hired a London-based company and involved four Texas lottery retailers to help buy 25.8 million tickets.
“This operation stands as one of the most significant lottery rigging cases in U.S. history,” the lawsuit states.
The plaintiffs claim that Colossal Bets created Rook TX to hide the identities of the people receiving the illegal winnings. To pull off the scheme, they had just 72 hours to purchase millions of ticket combinations.
The lawsuit details how the men used custom software on smartphones to generate fake QR codes. These codes tricked official Texas Lottery terminals into accepting tickets as if they were valid, using the authorized Texas Lottery mobile app. This technology allowed them to print millions of tickets quickly.
When the winning numbers were announced on April 22, 2023, one of the men’s ticket matched the $95 million jackpot.
Besides the jackpot, they held 288 tickets with five winning numbers, 16,925 with four winning numbers, and 377,360 with three winning numbers. These smaller prizes added up to $2.4 million. The group accepted a lump sum payout of $57.8 million, bringing their total winnings to over $60 million.
Texas Lottery officials claim they were unaware of the scheme, but investigators suspect otherwise.
The scandal has sparked outrage among lawmakers, with some threatening to shut down the state lottery entirely. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick warned, “We cannot renew the Lottery Commission if we can’t trust it. If we can’t assure Texans the lottery is fair and not corrupt, then we must consider ending it.”
