Rob Sand - The Winning Ticket: Uncovering Americas Biggest Lottery Scam

If you bet that we cannot trust people in politics, The Winning Ticket will call your bluff. This true-crime story is also an inspiring tale of good government and the dedicated people like Rob Sand who deliver accountability. I learned, as Sands former professor, that he had a terrific legal mind. Reading this book taught me that hes also a gifted storyteller.

Katie Porter, U.S. Congresswoman ( D-CA )

As a former prosecutor I know that you cant try complex cases like the Hot Lotto fraud scandal without tenacity, an eye toward justice, and many late nights. Throughout the case Rob Sand never lost sight of his Iowa values or sworn duty to seek justice. His story is both a gripping true-crime tale and a love letter to the small towns that shape the fabric of our country.

Amy Klobuchar, U.S. Senator ( D-MN )

In an upbeat personal chronicle Rob Sand describes with narrative anecdotes how a youthful Iowan matured, ever mindful of old-fashioned values. As the country has become increasingly divisive and partisan Sand has opted for an uplifting path of public service built on trust and decency. For a public worn out by political traumas he provides a story about governance as it should be. It makes the reader proud rather than cynical about our great republic.

Jim Leach, former U.S. Congressman ( R-IA )

Rob Sand with Reid Forgrave

Potomac Books

An imprint of the University of Nebraska Press

2022 by Rob Sand

Cover designed by University of Nebraska Press; cover image 2022 by Felicia Joy Mooney.

All rights reserved. Potomac Books is an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Sand, Rob, 1982, author. | Forgrave, Reid, 1979, author.

Title: The winning ticket: Uncovering Americas biggest lottery scam / Rob Sand with Reid Forgrave.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021038180

ISBN 9781640123717 (hardback)

ISBN 9781640125346 (epub)

ISBN 9781640125353 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH : LotteriesCorrupt practicesUnited States.

Classification: LCC HG 6126 . S 36 2022 | DDC 795.3/80973dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021038180

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Thank you goes first to my wife, Christine: for your consistent support and love through everything necessary to make this book possible. Not to be neglected, your thoughts on drafts were well-received and so beneficial to the final manuscript. Im the luckiest.

Mom and Dad: as always, all credit or blame really comes back to you. Thank you.

Thank you to Amy and Peter Bernstein, my agents: for taking a chance on some guy in Iowa with a wild story, and for your patience, guidance, and wisdom throughout this experience. I greatly enjoyed working with you. Everyone at Potomac Books has my gratitude: first, for recognizing the potential this book had, and second, for working with me, also patiently, to get it all put together. Thank you to my coauthor, Reid: for your friendship, good humor, and expertise in fleshing out of the skeleton of the book I started with.

To everyone around me as I grew up in Decorah, from friends to parents of friends to church-goers and teachers and coworkers: you helped shape me, my outlook on the world, and everything I might do in this life. And to everyone who worked on this case with me, Matt, Don, Tina, Joe, Richard, David, Joann, Rob, Mary, Terry, Tom, and more: I hope you feel I told our wild story well. Regardless, I want to tell you again here how good and important your work was and is. We wouldnt have gotten here without it.

Before I met Eddie Tipton, the closest Id come to a rigged lottery was when I was about twelve, and I won it. The Northeast Iowa Fox & Coon Club in my hometown of Decorah, Iowa, an idyllic small town nestled near the bluffs of the Upper Iowa River, had a raffle as part of their annual supper. The prize was a Ruger 10/22 semiautomatic rifle. The person who just so happened to draw my name out of the five-gallon bucket? Well, it was my best friend, sitting right there next to me with a shocked look on his face.

Rob Sand! my buddy Kole Quandahl read from the paper scrap in his hand. I was struck dumb. Id never won anything before, and now a .22? Holy cow! Rob Sand! repeated the club president loudly. He didnt realize I was seated right there next to him because I had yet to have an outward reaction. My dad was there, and Koles dad was there, and they basically reacted for me with some whooping and hollering. I could hardly believe it. The club president handed me the rifle. Im not even sure if I thanked him, because Im not even sure if I could yet speak. But getting that rifle in my hands only deepened my awe. The smooth, shiny hardwood stock that fully swallowed up the ten-round magazine. The heavy, expensive-looking action. I had no idea it was one of the most popular and affordable rifles in the country, only a couple hundred bucks at the nearest Walmart. I just knew that this firearm was shinier, newer, cooler, and way more semiautomatic than my dads hand-me-down rifles Id learned to shoot on, rifles that originally had been handed down to him from his dad.

Later that week, Kole and I were hunting sparrows with BB guns. Hey, Rob. Guess what? he said with his crooked smile.

I dont know, I said with mine. What?

I seen your name on that slip of paper before I pulled it out of the bucket, he told me.

Kole! I said, no longer smiling. You cant do that! Thats cheating!

I was angry. There was only one thing to do, and that was the right thing. We gotta take it back.

Im kidding, Im kidding! Kole eased off quickly. I knew that would piss you off. I couldnt see in the bucket. The top was too high. He paused. But if I couldve, and I seen your name, I wouldve pulled it out anyway.

I didnt say anything. I was still upset at the idea, and now I was doubly upset at having been poked fun of for being upset at the idea. That feeling has never entirely left me. Ive made my share of mistakes in life, but Ive never understood why people trying to be good and do right get mocked so often. I have no doubt some readers will roll their eyes at this goody-two-shoes story. But why? Shouldnt we be proud of standing up for the right thing? Kole and I went back to hunting sparrows, but here I am, a quarter-century later, with some lingering questions about whether I should feel guilt for something I didnt do and that probably didnt happen at all.

Kole and I are still friends, and we try to get the families together for a weekend now and then. I still have that Ruger. And now that Ive met Eddie Tipton, the mastermind of the largest lottery-rigging scheme in American history, Ive got a lot more to say about rigged lotteries. Ill be telling you plenty about that in these pages.

But theres more I want to tell you than just a story about rigged lotteries. Dont get me wrong: I understand that story is probably why you opened the pages of this book. And its a wild, wild story, one that Id find hard to believe if I hadnt spent years of my life working on it: concealed identities, shady attorneys, innocent dupes, an ethical fireworks salesman, a crooked lawman from near Texas Hill Country who hoodwinked an FBI agent, malicious computer code hidden deep in random numbergenerating computers, a mysterious trust based in Belize, a lying Canadian (yes, really), a missing $16-million lottery ticket, a trial national media said I would lose and, weirdest of all, Bigfoot hunters. Yep, you read that right.