The international gaming community has bought almost every number combination for Lotto Texas 2023

The mystery is solved.

Who won Lotto Texas' huge $95 million jackpot last year?

The official announcement revealed that the winner is Colleyville. But when I went to the store where the winning ticket was sold, it was the strangest lottery store I've ever seen.

There was no sign that lottery tickets were being sold there. The location was advertised as “Hooked on MT,” promoting fishing in Montana.

It didn't take long for The Watchdog to discover that a syndicate had pooled its money and spent nearly $26 million buying every possible combination of numbers.

What a gamble! Spend $26 million to maybe win the $95 million (payout $57.8 million after taxes).

It worked. There was a jackpot winner, but as Texas lottery rules allow, the identity of winners of big prizes can remain secret. That's what happened here.

Since then, the consequences have been immense. Some say the integrity of the lottery is at risk. How could regular players who buy $1 in tickets have a chance of competing against someone who bought $26 million in tickets to the Texas Lotto drawing?

State lawmakers are studying lottery rules to determine how and whether players can legally enter contests using phone apps and computer software.

So how does someone buy $26 million worth of tickets in three days? Texas has a rule that requires you to be physically present to purchase a ticket at a retail store checkout. The lottery changed this during the pandemic to allow e-purchases. Critics say this goes against the intent of the law, which is to keep sales going the old-fashioned way.

I first reported on all of the above last year. But I didn't know who bought the winning tickets and how they did it. Now thank you Houston Chronicle Reporter Eric Dexheimer, who has been studying the story for weeks, paints a vivid picture of how this happened.

It's not a pretty picture.

Winner in Maltese?

According to the chroniclethe winner was a company called Rook TX. But don't let TX fool you. It is a Delaware corporation with a registered agent in New Jersey.

The program was organized by a Maltese businessman chronicle learned. The massive purchase was apparently funded by a London betting company called Colossus Bets, which sets up betting syndicates like this one.

In Texas, just four lottery locations sold nearly 26 million tickets in three days.

The Colleyville store, for example, sold 11 million tickets in the 72-hour sales period. How is this physically possible?

Four lottery stores like the one in Colleyville asked the lottery commission for an additional dozen computer terminals to handle the massive sales. The lottery complied. More terminals meant more revenue – but not necessarily for the Texans.

What apparently happened is that these terminals at four lottery sales companies in Texas used special software to sell so many tickets around the clock.

The Lottery Commission did not respond to The Watchdog's written questions for this story. But a spokesman said this chronicle No laws or rules were broken.

State Sen. Bob Hall, R-Canton, urged the lottery to stick to its roots and not modernize sales through phones, computers and the Internet — unless it gets legislative approval.

He wants the games to be “played in person and with cash.”

Lottery couriers

This major purchase involved, among other things, iPads with QR codes with number combinations that could be used and printed out via government-approved terminals chronicle reported.

Lottery rules prohibit high-tech, third-party devices that were used to expedite purchases. The commission must approve the facility.

If phone apps and computer purchases are not allowed under lottery law, how could the lottery sell nearly $26 million worth of tickets in just three days before the April 2023 drawing?

The answer is: couriers. Proponents of high-tech sales say the couriers are like DoorDash, delivering tickets rather than food. You take the order, buy the product and deliver it.

Couriers take ticket orders from customers via an app on their phones or computers. Couriers claim they sent an employee to purchase tickets from licensed brick-and-mortar lottery retailers. A scanned image of the ticket is sent to the player.

You can transfer massive quantities of tickets electronically to licensed lottery locations.

Oddly enough, lottery officials say they can't regulate couriers because it's a private business arrangement that falls outside the lottery's purview.

Dawn Nettles of Garland, who runs the gadfly website Texas Lotto Report, asked in a letter to state lawmakers, “Why is the Texas Lottery defending the apps so vigorously?” Answer: Sales were down and egos were hurting.”

This story is important to Texans because regular lottery players hoping to win big are virtually wiped out. The odds against regular players, who had bought around $1.5 million for the drawing, were mathematically excluded from winnings by international buyers.

“Their chances drop significantly when wealthy, international players use modern technology to buy almost all tickets, as happened here,” Nettles wrote.

Of course, everyone has an equal chance of winning the jackpot. But what happened here, Nettles told me, is that Texas players built up the jackpot, and then outsiders came in and won the money, buying almost all the combinations to almost guarantee a win.

This is about more than just the questionable use of high-tech tools to purchase tens of millions of dollars worth of playing cards at warp speed.

This seems to be the definition of government-authorized greed.