The woman from Texas who recently won the $83.5 million lottery jackpot may never get her money, officials say.
The unnamed Austin resident used the app Jackpocket to buy $20 worth of Texas Lotto tickets for the February 17 draw. Jackpocket is a third-party company, also known as a “online lottery courier,” that charges customers to buy tickets and scratch-offs from afar.
The Texas lottery said seven days after her win that they would be looking into two other big wins because they thought the winners might have been laundering money. Even though this happened after she won the prize, she is still not getting paid. About two million people in Texas use lottery transportation services.
The woman went to the lottery’s offices in Austin last Tuesday to get her winnings, but she was sent home without them.
“I’ve been frustrated, sad, and stressed, and now I’m just angry,” she told the Austin America-Statesman not long ago while her lawyer, Randy Howry, was there. “Really, I spent $20.” It wouldn’t have cost $26 million to try every possible mix of numbers.
Ryan Mindell, Executive Director of the Texas Lottery Commission, was harshly criticised at a hearing of the Texas Senate Finance Committee on February 12 after a group used lottery couriers to buy more than $25 million worth of tickets in bulk. These tickets covered 99 percent of all possible combinations of numbers, which won the group the $95 million jackpot in April 2023.
After saying at first that it couldn’t change the law, the TLC said on February 24 that it would go ahead and make lottery courier services illegal in the state.
The commission also said it wanted to change the rules so that stores who work with third-party operators would lose their licenses.
On the same day, Texas Governor Greg Abbott told the Texas Rangers to look into her lottery win and the big win in 2023. After two days, Ken Paxman, the attorney general of Texas, said that he would be looking into the two “suspicious” wins as well.
The woman’s lawyer said that the TLC’s general counsel said that the commission would wait to decide if the wins should be paid out until the Texas Rangers finish their investigation.
The woman says she won last month’s drawing and should get the money.
“There are times to look into things, but I don’t think this is one of them,” she told Nextstar on Wednesday. She said, “This is a chance for me to do other things with my life, and I want to be able to go do those.”
Howry also said that his client had done nothing wrong. He said, “We played by all the rules, and we’ll continue to do so, and we expect my client to be paid.”
The woman’s lawyer told a local news station that his client would consider all options, including going to court, if the jackpot wasn’t paid out within three days, which is how long it usually takes for winnings to be paid out after a ticket is given.
Four days after the lottery couriers were banned, on February 28, all 100 state senators agreed to make them illegal. Acting as a runner for pay would be a misdemeanour in Texas if the bill passed the House and was signed by Abbott. It could lead to up to a year in jail and a $4,000 fine.
There have been scandals involving the TLC in the past few years. A group looked into it because they thought that its jackpots might be used to launder money.
The law that created the Texas Lottery in 1991 says that tickets can’t be sold over the phone.
Representatives from the lottery told senators that apps like Jackpocket could be used by children or let single buyers buy a lot of tickets for a single drawing with a lot of different number combinations.
A Jackpocket representative said that the group had stopped operating in Texas.
They told the news station, “Even though we have a history of following the rules and are committed to responsible gaming, the Texas Lottery Commission has issued a new policy that prohibits our services, effective immediately.”
“Because of this, we are stopping our lottery courier service in Texas.”