In January 2021, a million-dollar ticket was printed in Waco for an illicit lottery ticket reseller, Lottery.com.
Instead of a winner coming forward immediately, the ticket was shrouded in secrecy. According to the Comptroller’s database of lottery payments, the jackpot went unpaid until fourteen days after the 180-day deadline to cash a winning ticket.
The winnings were claimed anonymously through the mail by an individual from Shanghai, China.
Regarding this pattern of play, the Texas Lottery Commission was and remains uninterested in questionable buying and redemption behavior.
The Lottery Commission should have viewed the $1 million ticket as suspicious in 2021 based on public disclosures by Lottery.com. In a press release celebrating the sale of the million-dollar ticket, the company noted it could not locate the winner.
That’s bizarre. The company, which illicitly sold lottery tickets online via an app, in contravention of Texas law and legislative intent, boasted that users could track tickets and “get alerts when you win.” This is according to an archived copy of the company’s website from when the ticket was printed.
The site claimed it could ensure safety by “utilizing industry-leading technology that verifies your identity, age, and location to provide the best and most secure mobile lottery experience.” A year later, an audit conducted by Kostelanetz & Fink of the company’s sales would reveal none of this was true.
They had lost a user, one who had just scored a million-dollar win, and said so publicly. It is unclear if the Texas Lottery Commission could be bothered by the circumstances.
Texas Lottery spokesman Steve Helm claimed via email that the $1 million ticket was postmarked by the 180-day deadline, so they sent the money two weeks after the 180-day deadline to redeem the ticket. He did not respond when asked if his assertion was based on reviewing documents that could support the claim.
According to a letter recently sent to the Lottery Commission, the ticket sat in Ryan Dickinson’s desk drawer for five months before it was allegedly sent to China for a signature. Dickinson’s involvement is noteworthy for a few reasons.
In 2022, according to SEC filings, Dickinson, then-CFO of Lottery.com, was fired for illegally selling lottery tickets. These sales were disclosed to the Texas Lottery in June of 2022.
A week before the $1 million ticket was purportedly sold via Lottery.com’s app, its retail partner in Waco—ALTX Management—printed two back-to-back $50,000 lottery tickets. Ryan Dickinson, according to payout records, cashed both of them at a claims center in Austin.
According to Helm, the Texas Lottery did not investigate Dickinson or these ticket sales because they were not suspicious.
They should have been.
According to 2021 SEC filings, Lottery.com said tickets would only be sold to players in the state where they lived. Just a year after these filings, the aforementioned Kostelanetz & Fink audit found the company couldn’t be sure where players were playing and revealed the company was printing Texas tickets for players in other states. Such an act violates state and federal law.
The Lottery Commission may have uncovered this activity if it had been bothered to do its job—police ticket sales in Texas.
Did the rightful buyers of the million-dollar and two $50,000 tickets receive their winnings? An audit of payout methods employed by Dickinson was unclear since he refused to visit with the auditors.
While it’s possible that the million-dollar winning ticket was purchased by a poor soul in Pennsylvania or California, it’s also possible it was printed fraudulently.
