
Ex-lottery worker who rigged winnings gets 25 years in prison - WestCoastJustin
http://money.cnn.com/2017/08/22/news/iowa-lottery-sentencing/index.html
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ransom1538
Ok. Do these guys that commit white collar crime not know how a passport
works? If you have millions of dollars stashed in bank accounts WHY are you in
the US? Why are you buying estates and testing out a new bmwI8 and spilling
champagne all over? Why not get on a _plane_ go to Morocco (a country with an
extremely complex extradition process)? wtf. Even the guy running silk road
was hanging out in SF now lives in a 4x6 concrete cube - instead why not hang
out with Edward Snowden in a Russian bar or whatever.

This guy for example the FBI calls just to chat. They can't touch him.

[http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/11/felon_share...](http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/11/felon_shares_inside_story_of_o.html)

~~~
arcanus
I've also always wondered this. But people seldom run.

I think Snowden had seen enough of the sausage being made to realize that
hiding in the USA was impossible, given the security apparatus' capabilities.

~~~
notfromhere
Given that he defected to Moscow, staying in the US wasn't an option

~~~
metalliqaz
Crazy that people still believe this stupid lie, easily debunked by 30 seconds
on Wikipedia.

Even crazier is that the people who really wanted to string Snowden up by the
neck were the conservatives, because they love law enforcement and are willing
to give up freedom in order to fight Islamic terrorism. In other words,
supporting Big Brother despite ostensibly wanting less government.

Crazier still is that those same people, the ones who were demonizing Snowden
for ending up in Russia, are now in love with Assange and Putin because Trump.

"Two things are infinite: the Universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure
about the Universe."

~~~
chaostheory
> Even crazier is that the people who really wanted to string Snowden up by
> the neck were the conservatives

I strongly feel that this had bipartisan support across the aisles. Obama
supported it, despite his pledge to protect whistle blowers. Hillary was no
different.

~~~
asveikau
It's true that this was bipartisan amongst elected officials, and strangely to
me, a number of liberal people in my native DC area that I still talk to. I
think there were varying degrees though. Do you think Trump would have let
Manning go for example? I'm not sure that even Hillary would have. And yet
Obama did, eventually.

Also, there is little doubt in my mind that mutual hate of Hillary brought
together WikiLeaks and several previously unlikely allies.

~~~
chaostheory
> you think Trump would have let Manning go for example? I'm not sure that
> even Hillary would have.

Of course not, I'm just trying to dispel the myth that the world is in black
and white. You can't just hold the 'other' party accountable. We need to look
in the mirror.

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rdtsc
> "It's difficult even saying that with all the people that I know behind me
> that I hurt."

It is interesting to think about who he considers he hurt. The potential
winners who relied on lottery winning to secure a future for their families?
The lottery workers? He is a criminal surely, but isn't the whole lottery
system a tax on lack of education and it just gives false hope to people and
encourages gambling. He reduced faith in it somehow being a random lottery so
I guess he probably hurt the state income bottom line. At least in some states
they claim to use lottery proceeding to improve math education - not sure how
truthful that is.

~~~
temp-dude-87844
While I support the idea that lottery and gambling is for 'entertainment
purposes only', if one never buys into the lottery, they can never obtain the
winnings. Buying exactly one ticket per drawing at least places one in the
pool of potential winners, despite the odds being rather long. Although the
expected value is still minuscule, it's an unquantifiable improvement (since
we can't divide by zero).

And before you evoke any comparisons with the probabilities of getting struck
by lightning or hit by meteors, none of those will ever _pay_ you a nice chunk
of cash.

Investing the same amount of money in a financial device with higher
assurances of returns is not a comparable experience, neither psychologically
nor practically, even if we callously suppose that such instruments are in
fact widely available across all cross-sections of society. Holding back the
price of 1 ticket per drawing period from safer investments to gain a shot at
a high-payout lottery is simply diversifying your investment portfolio.

~~~
kibwen
_> Although the expected value is still minuscule, it's an unquantifiable
improvement (since we can't divide by zero)._

This isn't how it works, because the expected value, in monetary terms, is
negative once you factor in the cost of the tickets. Statistically, it is a
quantifiable unimprovement.

That said, lots of activities have negative expected monetary value, like
going to the movies, or going bowling. And it is theoretically _possible_ that
you will find an envelope in the bowling alley parking lot containing a
million dollars, but let's not pretend that both bowling and playing the
lottery are anything other than entertainment products at the end of the day.

~~~
mrb
> This isn't how it works, because the expected value, in monetary terms, is
> negative...

I once heard a statistics professor explaining he played the lottery. His
reason? It was fun. Period. He said one may spend $10 on a movie ticket and be
entertained for a few hours, but one would end up $10 poorer with 100%
certainty. On the other hand when _he_ spent $10 on a lottery ticket he was
entertained for days just thinking of the possibility of winning, and he
_might_ end up a lot richer, but it was not a necessary condition for him to
enjoy the fun it provides.

~~~
teddyh
That sounds exactly like a smoker “explaining” why they smoke. They claim to
enjoy it. In reality, of course, smokers only smoke because it makes them stop
feeling the nicotine urge for a short while, i.e. they feel like a normal non-
smoker person for a short while.

Likewise, anyone could fantasize about getting a windfall of mountains of
money from _far likelier_ events, like an unknown relative willing their
fortune to you. Sure, it’s unlikely, but it’s _more likely_ than winning the
lottery. You don’t need to play the lottery to do that.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> They claim to enjoy it. In reality, of course, smokers only smoke because it
> makes them stop feeling the nicotine urge for a short while

Using this model, it's difficult to explain where new smokers come from.

~~~
teddyh
The reason people start to smoke are the same reasons people start to drink
coffee, or tea, or beer. Nobody likes any of those things when they first try
them, but they _choose to acquire the taste_ , for either social reasons
and/or because they want the side effect (caffeine or alcohol). In the case of
cigarettes, the social effect has been very strong but is declining, and the
wanted side effect is illusory, but as long as people still think that they
will get something from nicotine, people will start to smoke, or vape, or
chew, or snuff, or whatever form it will take in the future.

~~~
thaumasiotes
[http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/01/11/schizophrenia-no-
smokin...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/01/11/schizophrenia-no-smoking-gun/)

In general, you're not on firm ground when someone says "I enjoy X" and you
say "no, I can tell what you enjoy better than you can".

------
mundo
> The prosecutor said Tipton will serve no more than five years, if he behaves
> and makes parole.

Well at least he didn't sell drugs.

Slightly relevant story: A few years ago I was visiting China and my
colleagues there were discussing a city official who had just been found
guilty of embezzling tens of millions of dollars from the local government
(which is more or less what this guy did). Me: "How much time did he get?"
Them: "Three days." Me: "In prison?" Them: "To live."

~~~
tptacek
The median sentence for sale of narcotics (state charges, like the lotto
fixer) is less than three years. In some jurisdictions the average drug sale
sentence is less than a year.

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pseingatl
If you can hack different lotteries in multiple states, how hard can it be to
hack voting machines?

You can't count on a complicated extradition process to prevent extradition.
With an Interpol Red Notice, travel is difficult. There's informal extradition
as well, as El Chapo found out. His Mexican cases were still on appeal when he
was shipped north. Florida lawyer Scott Rothstein fled to Morocco, turned
around and came home. Still, there are exceptions. France will not extradite
its citizens for any reason, in part because of the Holocaust. This keeps
Roman Polanski safe. Italy will not extradite its citizens either. Nor will
Israel.

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upofadown
Anyone know why these lotteries stopped using the traditional bingo ball
machines in favour of a black box?

~~~
tuna-piano
It's really telling when computer experts are the ones most scared ahout
electronic voting, software lotteries, etc.

Even the best BitCoin experts seem to recommend burying your bitcoin key in
you yard or storing it on paper at the bank.

~~~
FooHentai
Absolutely. The most useful idea I've seen about how to think about this is
this: 'On a network, everything is at zero distance'.

So, imagine the worst people you can imagine in the whole world, sitting right
there in the same room as all the things you care about. You'd probably be
worried about that, right?

But, the argument goes, we have all these security measures in place between
those things. They're not in the same room we've built all these walls! Sure,
but those walls are not impenetrable by a long shot. None of them beats simply
not being in the same place. Nobody has a teleporter yet, but those layers of
security you are relying on are vulnerable to a constantly evolving landscape
of exploits, vulnerabilities and plain old fuck-ups.

This is why air gaps are still such a valuable concept. Why off-siting your
backup tapes is not an outdated step but rather a pragmatic step in securing
your information assets. Why keeping some systems unplugged from any network
when they're running critical infrastructure is sensible. Why buring your
bitcoin wallet in some secret location is not the behaviour of an off-the-wall
tinfoil nutter.

There are, of course, steps to be taken if you have compelling reasons to stay
connected, and those steps can get you to (or close to) the same level of
assurance as unplugging. But those steps are complex, require ongoing
maintenance, and operate in an evolving threat landscape. Think for example:
Encryption protocols that we used to consider secure.

There's a simple bypass for that effort and knowledge and it's to unplug. It's
a very powerful tool, and yet often ridiculed, in my opinion from positions of
either ignorance or zealotry.

------
bluedino
It is a bit amazing when you think that on average, there is a new millionaire
(or even multi-millionaire) made by the different lotteries in the USA _every
day_

~~~
whipoodle
It would be interesting to know the rate at which they subsequently fall out
of that status.

------
socalnate1
How could you possibly believe you would get away with something like this.

~~~
tlb
He started in 2005 and the investigation started in 2015, so he did get away
with it for 10 years. He probably could have won a few, stopped, and gotten
away with it if he'd been less greedy.

The code was clever, generating predictable numbers on a few particular days
of the year. And it must have been subtle, to survive 10 years of nobody else
noticing.

~~~
jstanley
Makes you wonder how many people _do_ get away with things like this without
anybody realising.

~~~
pessimizer
Most criminals get away with most crimes. 40% of murders go unsolved.

~~~
chiliap2
Wouldn't that mean they don't get away with most murders?

~~~
wongarsu
It's close enough that undetected/unreported murders could tip the scales. If
you get away with making it look like an accident, isn't in the statistic of
unsolved murders.

------
humonga
Time to switch over to provably fair lotteries!

~~~
syrrim
This is actually a hard problem. In order to be provable, you have to be
deterministic (i.e. you can't leave the RNG as a black box). However you can't
let any individual (nor any conspiring individuals, think Sybil attacks)
predict the result, nor have any control over the result (except perhaps to
disqualify themselves).

~~~
leni536
What about this scheme?

This week's random number is the concatenation of three cryptographic
signatures of last week's random number. The three private keys are kept in
different places on cryptographic tokens and they are guarded. Lottery numbers
are drawn by a deterministic algorithm using the week's random number as seed.
In the case of a compromise of a single private key it can be revoked and
replaced by the signature of the two other keys.

I'm not a cryptographer, maybe this scheme is flawed in some way that I can't
immediately see.

~~~
syrrim
Presumably, the winner of the lottery will earn lots of money. As such,
someone would be willing to spend lots of money in order to ensure they can
win. They could therefore bribe the guards to give up the keys before bets are
placed, and therefore know what to bet on.

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Mz
So, have they not watched _Die Hard_? The point made in that movie is that
when you steal this many millions, they _will_ find you -- unless they think
you are already dead (thus, the plot to blow the building and look like they
all died in the process).

What were these fools thinking?

~~~
shellbackground
Using movies as basis for decision is even worse.

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jernfrost
Wow American sentences are out of this world. You get less than that for mass
murder in Norway.

------
mrep
Do these people not do code and/or security reviews? The random number
generator for a lottery seems like the most important part and should be
heavily audited.

------
eljimmy
> Tipton's lawyer said he expects his client will serve three to four years
> before being released.

Far from the 25 years mentioned in the headline...

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AliAdams
I'd love to know what he actually did. You'd think with what is at stake, the
lottery would have some serious security measures in place to stop someone
doing an obfuscated _if(date=x) return [12,34,5,6,7];_ or messing with the
RNG.

------
timboisvert
Anyone have details on how exactly he did it, and how he got caught? I'm not a
lottery player but I'm intrigued by the fact that one state had refused to pay
him because they thought it was fraudulent. What was their cue?

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Rjevski
I'm not saying this person is innocent, but 25 years for something that didn't
hurt anyone is way excessive. This sentence would be more appropriate for
murderers, and yet some of them get way less.

~~~
qq66
One of the principles of tort law is that the penalty should account for the
likelihood of getting caught. If your nuclear power plant melts down, punitive
damages will be low, since there's no way you could have ever covered it up,
and the plant will typically pay mostly compensatory damages for direct harms.
For a tort where you expect that thousands of people have done it without
getting caught, the punitive damages are very high so that the overall
calculus for a prospective criminal becomes net negative expected value.

That's not a principle of criminal law in the US but often becomes part of the
sentence extrajudicially.

~~~
jernfrost
Pointless though as that is not how humans really assess risk. England tried
thisin the 1700s or so. Replacing cops with harsh penalties. Did not work,
punishment levels kept going up without any affect on crime

~~~
qq66
It may be how companies assess risk, especially family-owned businesses, which
is probably why it's remained in tort law.

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ringaroundthetx
I didn't understand the State here, who did he harm? "All the people that were
harmed", what does that mean?

~~~
dennisgorelik
Eddie Tipton tarnished lottery's reputation. The State milks lottery (taxes)
and therefore loses financially if lottery reputation is tarnished.

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renas
This is the reason the lottery should be run by a smart contract in Ethereum
for example, like
[https://lifelottery.github.io/](https://lifelottery.github.io/)

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akulbe
.

~~~
kadenshep
Money represents time and resources. He can't exactly restore those either.

