Documentary to share new details about 2010 Iowa Lottery rigging scandal

DES MOINES — Terry Rich was on the front lines for one of Iowa’s great legal dramas.

Fifteen years after that drama unfolded, the story now will be told in a documentary.

Rich was chief executive officer of the Iowa Lottery in 2010 when lottery officials became suspicious over a mysterious attempt to claim a $14.3 million Hot Lotto prize. Iowa Lottery officials never paid out the Hot Lotto ticket after suspecting misconduct.

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It lead to an investigation that revealed a computer technician for the Urbandale-based Multi-State Lottery Association had manipulated computer software to illegally obtain $2.2 million after fixing lotteries in five states. The mastermind behind the scheme, Eddie Tipton, then of Norwalk, pleaded guilty in 2017 and was sentenced to up to 25 years in prison. He served just five years before being released on parole in 2022.

The documentary about the scheme — “Jackpot: America’s Biggest Lotto Scam” — will premiere June 3 on YouTube TV.

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The hourlong documentary was produced by AMS Pictures, and was written, produced and directed by Brad Osborne and Kim Clemons. It includes interviews with Rich, Rob Sand — then a prosecutor for the Iowa Attorney General’s Office in the Tipton case, and now State Auditor — and Mary Neubauer, the current Iowa Lottery media specialist.

Rich, who is credited as an executive producer on the documentary, spoke to The Gazette about the project and his memories of “America’s Biggest Lotto Scam.” What follows is that conversation, edited only for brevity and clarity.

Q: Tell us about this documentary and how it came to be.

A: The Eddie Tipton story has been around, and Eddie ultimately got out. But the (documentary) has the recap and a lot of the things that happened behind the scenes. I had probably four or five different companies wanting to do a documentary, and we kind of worked with them. … I got a call from someone who said that we could have editorial control to make sure the facts are accurate, rather than just put stuff in. There's a company out of Dallas called AMS Pictures. … They picked it up. … We’re going to drop it on YouTube TV. The goal is to have it on Wednesday, June 3. … It’s a one-hour documentary, basically telling quite a few behind-the-scenes stories of what happened, updating where Eddie is now, but it (also) kind of goes through everything before Eddie’s found and actually who spilled the beans, who messed up in Eddie’s plot to get us even on the on the trail. And then from there, all of the crazy things that had to happen on the trail to be able to charge him and get him in prison for a while.

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Q: Might viewers of this documentary see something that they may be seeing or learning about this story for the first time, even if they’re familiar with the story?

A: Absolutely. We actually have the phone call that tripped the whole thing up. That’ll be in the documentary. Plus Eddie's boss, which no one’s really heard from before. We have the basics of Sand and Mary helping tell the story, too. And I’m part of telling the story. And the lawyer in Wisconsin who, at the end, was the one that found the code — because Eddie had wiped everything out at his job here in Des Moines. So we’ll find how they actually found the code and had to go to Wisconsin to find that. So there’s a lot of little things.

Q: What is it, do you think, that still resonates about the story to where this company had interest in it, and that there was enough interest out there to put out this documentary all these years later? What is it about this story that still captivates people?

A: It's definitely an ongoing story that had about seven or eight different elements in it to solve the case. … Everybody knows that the guy did it, he went to prison for it, and there was something that he put in the computer. But this (documentary) tells the details. … Anytime that a newspaper or any kind of report goes out and they say lottery fraud, everything goes back to this. There haven’t been many lottery frauds. This has been kind of the granddaddy story, one that everybody remembers and talks about.

Comments: (515) 355-1300, erin.murphy@thegazette.com