“Lucky Larry” Dawson won a $9 million Hot Lotto jackpot in 2011, and nearly five years later he’s coming back for more.
A Des Moines law firm filed a lawsuit on Dawson’s behalf against the Iowa Lottery and the Multi-State Lottery Association, the Associated Press reports. It claims that because of a lottery-fixing scandal just months before Dawson’s win, the jackpot should have been almost three times bigger.
Eddie Tipton, the lottery association’s former security director, was convicted of rigging a $16.5 million jackpot. He supposedly fixed the numbers and purchased the winning ticket. He’s now awaiting trial for additional charges after being accused of rigging several lotteries in four other states between 2005 and 2011, depriving honest winners of millions.
The lawsuit states that if Tipton hadn’t rigged the game, the $16.5 million jackpot would have been added to the pool Dawson won. Jerry Crawford, the attorney representing Dawson, is requesting that he be awarded $10 million, which would be the lump sum for the lottery winnings, plus interest.
The Iowa Lottery claims that Dawson was paid the amount he was entitled to. “It’s impossible to rewrite history. No one can know what would have occurred in this case had any event in it been changed,” Iowa Lottery CEO Terry Rich told the AP, suggesting it’s possible that someone else could have won before Dawson.
Crawford may file additional lawsuits, so this could just be the first in a string of cases involving lottery winners wronged by Tipton.
