Last year, it was reported that an anonymous person or persons won the advertised $95 million Lotto Texas jackpot by purchasing nearly all of the 25.8 million number combinations in the game. Now, a Houston Chronicle investigation into the completely legal but ethically shady operation shows how it was done, and who was behind it.
Lotto Texas drawings take place every 72 hours, so it was a mystery how the unnamed winner could have purchased tens of millions of tickets in so short a timespan, all while staying (mostly) within the rules and regulations that the Texas Lottery Commission has in place to prevent cheating.
As it turns out, the elaborate operation can reportedly be traced back to Ade Repcenko, an industrious "gaming entrepreneur" based in Malta, the Mediterranean island nation that has become an online gaming capital. Funding was reportedly provided by Colossus Bets, a London-based firm that specializes in "buying syndicates" to make large but legal wagers.
(Photo by Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images)
You'll notice that neither of these parties is actually based in Texas, where the lottery was being held. For that, the participation of at least one third party was required: one such third party was a business called Lottery.com, based in Austin, which worked with one "affiliate" in Waco to purchase almost 7 million tickets in the operation. The owners of Lottery.com received a loan of $1.3 million from Honey Tree Trading before the operation took place, and in an interview Honey Tree owner Philip Gurian said that Repcenko had discussed with him a plan to devote significant time and money towards winning the $95 million Lotto Texas jackpot, which was the third highest in the history of the state. And, Gurian, said, it wasn't the first time:
"He told me he worked with a syndicate, and they pool money so that when lotteries get big enough they buy up all the tickets and get a big return…He said, 'We just did it in Texas.'"
With nearly every possible number combination in their hands, the group would be practically guaranteed to have a winning ticket, with the only real risk being that they might have to split the jackpot with another winner, shredding their profit margins (something that only had about an eight percent chance of happening, and did not ultimately occur). After eventually taking their $57.8 lump sum payout and accounting for all the other expenses involved in the operation, they turned a profit of roughly $20 million. But it isn't known how many players were putting up money to get in on the lottery pool, or what their personal profit margins might have been.
According to Gurian, the buying syndicate that performed the successful Lotto Texas operation in the spring of 2023 has made similar plays multiple times a year. And even though they don't want it publicized; the Texas Lottery Commission doesn't have any rules against such "professional buying" operations — although there are roadblocks in place that are supposed to make them more difficult.
The operation set up their own "retailers" in office buildings and other spaces, requesting additional lottery ticket kiosks for purposes of the big buy. And according to the Chronicle's report, the Texas Lottery Commision not only complied with the request, but did so enthusiastically, with eyes on a windfall $26 million in "extra" ticket purchases in addition to all those tickets being bought by the general public (most of whom are probably unaware they are playing against such sophisticated operations):
"Even though three of the four outlets that processed the 25 million numbers had barely any lottery sales leading up to the game, agency staff quickly signed off on their unusual, last-minute requests to add numerous extra ticket terminals and large amounts of paper stock they needed for the single April draw."
These so-called "outlets" were also reportedly in violation of TLC rules that licensed lottery retailers must conduct business other than lottery ticket sales and be publicly accessible, rules that appear to have been ignored by the commission according to the report. But even with dozens of Texas Lottery terminals, each number has to be selected individually (as opposed to a "quick pick") to guarantee every possible number combination, and yet the operation succeeded by printing off a reported 196 tickets per minute during its 72-hour window of operation between drawings.
This was reportedly done not by human hands on terminal touch screens alone:
"To sell 11 million tickets, each of those terminals would need to process just over 846,000 number selections in 72 hours. That comes out to 11,750 per terminal per hour — 196 each minute, or 3.26 per second. While experts said the system's laser printers could handle such volume, there is no obvious way a player could enter the millions of sequential six-number picks without some kind of outside computer help."
That computer help consisted of iPads or similar devices programmed with QR codes corresponding to millions of sequential number combinations. These codes could be scanned by the licensed lottery kiosks and produce individual tickets as quickly as possible, without the risk of any repeated sequences.
John Brier is the founder of yet another lottery-related company in this story, currently in a legal battle against Lottery.com for breach of contract, and he had this to say to the Chronicle about the technological side of the operation:
"In September of 2023 I was asked to participate in a video Zoom call with Ade Repcenko…During that video call Ade Repcenko said he had created specially designed iPads to allow Lottery.com and the other courier's to print the millions of ticket combinations."
This method of using preprogrammed iPads to "trick" the lottery ticket kiosks into selling as many tickets as possible was also confirmed by another source, but in a Texas Lottery Commission investigation of the "retailer" that sold the winning ticket, it was all found to be completely legal and above board.
Unfortunately for any future attempts at such an operation, the TLC will reportedly no longer comply with requests for extra ticket terminals so easily. Such requests will have to be approved by the organization's executive director and must be justified by prior retail performance, meaning that the public must be using them to buy lottery tickets the old-fashioned way in big enough numbers before more terminals will be provided.
But if one thing is clear from this story it's that with enough time and money you can find a way to win, even if it's a way that most regular people would consider cheating.
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