An ex-Lotto employee who tried to get rich by installing secret software onto the computer that picks Lotto winners has been convicted of fraud for trying to rig a $US14.3 million jackpot.
Eddie Tipton, 52, was the information security director for the Multi-State Lottery Association when he tried to rig the system from within with a self-deleting rootkit, programming numbers into the computerised “Hot Lotto” game and buying a ticket with those numbers. Yahoo has details on the case against him:
Prosecutors said Eddie Tipton inserted a stealth program into the computer that randomly picked the numbers then deleted it so it could not be detected. Although Tipton, 52, never got his hands on the winning total, he was charged with two counts of fraud.
The Des Moines Register described the software Tipton used in his ill-fated war on the game of chance:
The prosecution has accused Tipton of installing a rootkit onto a random number generating computer in the draw room at MUSL when he was in the room to change the clock on the computer Nov. 20, 2010.
Tipton stuck a USB drive into the computer and installed a rootkit that manipulated the draw, the state says. The rootkit then self-destructed without a trace.
Tipton bought a lotto ticket with the same numbers he programmed and gave it to a friend, but his scheme didn’t work because Iowa won’t pay out a jackpot without identifying winners. Tipton was convicted on circumstantial evidence, since his co-workers and friends testified that he bought the lotto ticket and gave it to his pal.
He was fired after getting arrested in January on fraud charges, and now he faces five years in prison for each of the two counts of fraud.
[Yahoo]
Picture: The Courier-Mail