It’s a dream many of us have to win the lottery. Though we know the odds are stacked against us, the thrill of imagining winning hundreds of millions of dollars in an instant is enough to keep us playing.
Unfortunately, it seems the odds to win last years $95 million Lotto Texas jackpot were stacked against Texans more than we could imagine.
Though on paper, a Colleyville resident took home the grand prize, an investigation from The Watchdog and Dallas Morning News found that an international syndicate spent almost $26 million to purchase every possible numeric combination for Lotto Texas.
The winning ticket was purchased at a store in Colleyville called “Hooked on MT,” which purportedly promotes fishing in Montana. There was nothing on the storefront that indicated lottery tickets were sold there.
During the pandemic, the law was changed in Texas to allow e-purchases of tickets. This Colleyville storefront asked the lottery commission for an extra dozen computer terminals to handle the massive sales.
The commission complied, sent the terminals, and whoever was operating this storefront used software that purchased lottery tickets 24/7! Hey, the scheme worked. A $26 million investment turned into a $95 million win.
The Watchdog tracked the company’s primary ownership group all the way to Malta, an island country in Southern Europe located in the Mediterranean Sea, and the massive purchase of tickets was funded by a London betting company called Colossus Bets which puts together betting syndicates like this one.
Dawn Nettles of Garland, who runs the Texas Lotto Report gadfly website, has a theory to why the lottery commission allowed this international syndicate to purchase $26 million in tickets (for reference, Texans purchased about $1.5 million in tickets).
She said, “Why is the Texas Lottery defending the apps so fiercely? Answer: Sales were declining, and egos were hurting.”
LISTEN on the Audacy App
Sign Up and Follow 100.3 JACK-FM
Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
