Texas Lottery


The Texas Lottery is the government-operated lottery available throughout Texas. It was operated by the Texas Lottery Commission, headquartered in downtown Austin, Texas. The lottery and its operator, International Game Technology, have been criticized and investigated by Texas lawmakers, and in media, during the course of its three decades of association, sparking government investigations.

History

Governor Ann Richards "instituted the Texas lottery to supplement school finances", according to the record of the U.S. Congress. House Bill 54 was introduced for a state lottery on July 11, 1991. The voters of Texas approved an amendment to the Texas Constitution November 5, 1991 authorizing lottery sales in Texas.
The Texas Lottery Commission created an unusual contest for the Lottery logo; designs from a contracted advertising agency were pitted against designs from the general public. One logo from each source was placed in head-to-head competition, and the winning logo, a cowboy hat thrown high in celebration was the public design. The winner was Suzan Holten, from Carrollton.
The lottery's first game was the scratch game Lone Star Millions, with the first ticket sold to Texas Lottery's primary promoter, then Gov. Richards, at Polk's Feed Store in Oak Hill, on May 29, 1992. First-day sales of 23.2 million tickets sets a then-world record. First-week sales ending June 5 set another world record, with over 102 million tickets.
Lotto Texas began sales on November 7, 1992, with the first drawing on November 14 and the first jackpot won by a resident of Schulenburg on November 28.
The Texas Lottery Commission was formed via legislation in 1993 to take over management of the lottery from the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts; the legislation also gives the commission oversight of charitable bingo games.
By November 1993, Texas Lottery sales exceeded US$1 billion, breaking a record set by the Florida Lottery in 1989. By 1998, Texas news media were prominently featuring negative reports on the state’s lottery contractor, IGT.
Controversies ended the appointments of Texas Lottery's first three executive directors, among others who followed, including Lawrence Littwin, in 1997; Linda Cloud, in 2002; Reagan Greer, in 2005; and, more recently, Gary Greif, in 2024, and his successor, Ryan Mindell, the following year. Littwin's successor, Linda Cloud, resigned in 2002, admitting to lying to media regarding "her knowledge of accusations that a former lottery commissioner had harassed and bruised a female lottery employee during a lunch meeting" which she claimed was due to the instruction of Governor Rick Perry's chief of staff, Mike McKinney.
Joan R. Ginther became a four-time winner of prizes over $1 million from 1993 to 2010, first from Lotto Texas and subsequently three times from scratch tickets. All of her winning tickets were purchased in Texas, and two of them were bought from the same convenience store in Bishop.
Texas joined the Mega Millions consortium in 2003, with sales beginning December 3 and the first drawing to include Texas on December 5. Though no Texas ticket won the jackpot, one Texas-bought ticket matched the first five numbers for US$175,000. The first Texas jackpot winner of Mega Millions was not until the drawing of October 4, 2004; a Carrollton player took home the $101 million prize.
As part of the cross-selling arrangement between the operators of Mega Millions and Powerball, the Texas Lottery Commission agreed to begin selling Powerball tickets on January 31, 2010; the first drawing including Texas was three days later.
On April 23, 2013, the House voted not to recommission the Texas Lottery Commission, which would have potentially brought an end to the lottery in Texas. Later in the day, the House reversed course with a new vote on the bill.
In 2023, a consortium led by London-based trader Bernard Marantelli, co-founder of Colossus Bets, obtained official IGT ticket-printing terminals, which they used to produce nearly all of the 25.8 million possible number combinations in Texas lottery tickets, to obtain a $95 million jackpot. The scheme was carried out "in plain view of the authorities" resulting in what Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick declared to be "the biggest theft from the people of Texas in the history of Texas".
Gary Grief, executive director, resigned in 2024 after facing public scrutiny for his role in facilitating mass lottery ticket purchases using third-party courier firms such as Jackpocket. This raised questions about regulatory monitoring and fairness in lottery operations. The following year, on April 21, 2025, his successor, Ryan Mindell, a 10-year veteran of the commission, resigned from the same post at the embattled Texas Lottery Commission, one year after his 2025 promotion to executive director.

Class-action lawsuit and investigations

, then IGT, has operated Texas Lottery since its inception in 1994. prior to its 2006 acquisition by Lottomatica; 2015 merger with International Game Technology ; and subsequent rebranding of the company to International Game Technology.
In 2012, the company's contract was estimated at about $100 million annually, making GTECH the fourth-largest vendor to the state of Texas. The lottery operator has been implicated in numerous scandals regarding its management of the state lottery.
A class-action lawsuit was filed on February 14, 2025, alleging violations of state and international laws in April 2023 amid a "long-running fraud scheme in collaboration with Lottery.com and its executives." The lead complainant is LottoReport.com founder Dawn Nettles, with Lottery.com, Rook TK, IGT Solutions and former Texas Lottery Commissioner Gary Grief as defendants. The suit alleges that defendants "manipulated the Texas Lottery system to ensure a fraudulent win in the April 22, 2023, Lotto Texas drawing", which allowed a foreign criminal organization to claim a $57.7 million lottery prize.
On February 20, 2025, Lt. Gov. Patrick launched an investigation into the Texas Lottery after an $83.5 million jackpot win raised concerns about mobile lottery courier services. The controversy has sparked legislative efforts to ban mobile lottery games, with some lawmakers pushing to abolish the Texas Lottery entirely. A week later, Patrick extended the investigation to include a second lottery drawing, as did Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
On February 24, Texas Governor Greg Abbott directed the state’s Department of Public Safety Texas Ranger Division to investigate the $83.5 jackpot win. Subsequently, members of the Texas Lottery Commission were grilled by the Senate Finance Committee, alleging their possible facilitation of money laundering amid a "long-running fraud scheme in collaboration with Lottery.com and its executives", including former Commissioner Grief, who had retired suddenly in 2024.
On February 27, it was reported that campaign finance records indicated that Texas Lottery contractor IGT Solutions had directly and indirectly influenced state policymakers, and had acted as a title sponsor for Governor Abbott’s 2025 State of the State address at the start of the month. During the previous year, the Texas Senate had attached a rider to the state budget that instructed the Texas Lottery Commission that its funding would be cut off unless it stopped online lottery ticket resellers; Abbott, whose high-level staff has included current and former lobbyists of IGT and ticket reseller Jackpocket, had directed the commission to ignore the legislature's instruction. The Senate subsequently banned courier ticket reselling the following day.

Courier services: digital and third-party resellers

Resellers, known as ticket couriers, have operated legally in Texas since 2019. Through these couriers, Texas Lottery players can purchase tickets digitally from services functioning as third-party sellers of the lottery operator, purchasing physical tickets for players, photographing them, and then notifying winners. Jackpocket, which operates lawfully in various states, expanded into Texas in 2021 after forming a partnership with the Texas Lottery, deemed necessary as sales decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to a November 2024 Texas House interim report, courier services accounted for $101 million in lottery ticket sales over the first seven months of the 2023 financial year in Texas. Legal experts and state officials have questioned whether such businesses adhere to Texas laws that restrict the sale of lottery tickets over the internet. In reaction to the scandal, several lawmakers advocated for stronger monitoring or outright bans on third-party lottery courier services.
On February 28, 2025, the Texas Senate voted to ban courier services from participating in the purchase of lottery tickets. The Texas Lottery Commission's use and management of courier services has resulted in on-going investigations, in 2025, by both the Texas Rangers and the Texas attorney general.

''Rigged: How the Lottery is Playing Texans'' 2025 documentary

In March 2025, Texas Scorecard released a documentary film, Rigged: How the Lottery is Playing Texans, outlining corrupt practices by Texas Lottery through its operator, IGT, via its remote courier, adopted as resellers during the pandemic, and subsequently retained, despite state law specifying that Texas Lottery must be "played in-person, with cash, at a brick-and-mortar location conducting regular business."
Texas Scorecard asserts, "Texas Lottery has been plagued by scandal ever since its inception: corrupt vendors, illegal ticket sales, overseas payouts, rigged jackpots" and "the game is rigged." Texas Lottery Commission officials are revealed as complicit with its long-term sole operator IGT, formerly GTECH.
Among otherwise documented transgressions of the "rogue agency" during the last five years, as reported in the film, are:
  • 2021 - Forwarded $1 million to an anonymous "winner" in China
  • 2022 - Texas Lottery tickets sold to buyers in other states
  • 2023 - Tickets sold by vendor in Dominican Republic, personally authorized by Gary Grief
  • 2023 - European gambling syndicate bought every number combination for about $25 million to win $95 million, which was paid out
  • 2025 - $80M ticket printed by reseller, despite ED Mindell's claim that lottery resellers were using couriers to purchase tickets in retail stores