Fall guy?
The Texas Lottery Commission Executive Director has resigned over festering controversies surrounding lottery couriers and their involvement in two huge jackpots over the last 12 months.
Lottery Commission Chairman Robert Rivera announced the resignation of Ryan Mindell on Monday. The Commission’s Chief Financial Officer Sergio Rey will take over Mindell’s post in the interim.
Grief’s resignation also had much to do with lottery couriers
Mindell had only been in the executive director role for a year, taking over for Gary Grief in 2024. Grief’s resignation also had much to do with lottery couriers, whom he was accused of lobbying without a green light from state lawmakers.
What is a lottery courier?
Since the hubbub in Texas revolves around lottery couriers, it would help to explain what they are. In their simplest form, lottery couriers are third-party services that buy tickets for customers, safeguard the tickets, and then either pay out winnings directly to the customer or hand over the ticket for redemption if the prize is large enough.
Lottery couriers operate online. One of the largest, DraftKings-owned Jackpocket, is available in 18 states plus Washington, DC. Jackpocket does not take a cut of a person’s winnings.
Some lottery couriers, and this is where much of the outcry lies, own or work with retail storefronts whose only real purpose is to print as many tickets as possible. The retail operations typically must sell something else, so they might have a few shelves of products, but their job is to print tickets. This is legal in Texas – the operations are licensed by the Texas lottery.
Group was guaranteed $95m win
There has been much concern about the inner workings of the Texas lottery among government officials, to the point that one state representative has penned a bill that would get rid of the lottery altogether.
The controversy surrounding couriers centers around two jackpots, the primary one coming in April 2023. It was one of the rare occasions when it was actually possible to buy every possible number combination and win, which is exactly what a European consortium did.
used lottery courier retail operations to print tickets around the clock
The group bought 25.9 million one-dollar tickets and used lottery courier retail operations to print tickets around the clock. Not only were they guaranteed to win the $95m jackpot, but they were also guaranteed many other lucrative cash prizes for hitting other number combinations.
Though lottery couriers do appear to be legal in the state, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick is going after them, calling the $95m jackpot win “the biggest theft from the people of Texas in the history of Texas.”
$83.5m winner still fighting for her money
The other big win involving a courier hit in February of this year, when a woman won $83.5m with one of ten tickets she bought through Jackpocket. The lottery has yet to pay her, saying it needed to conduct multiple investigations first.
In March, the anonymous woman and her attorney, Randy Howry, met with lottery representatives and are considering legal action.
his client has been “caught in the crossfire”
“She played by all the rules in play at the time,” Howry said, lamenting that his client has been “caught in the crossfire” created by politicians.
The woman said she opted to use Jackpocket because she considered it safer than walking into a traditional lottery retail outlet.
The controversy surrounding this win got to the point that Lt. Gov. Patrick brought a camera crew to Winner’s Corner, a Jackpocket-owned retail store in Austin. Though the trip was clearly intended as a “gotcha” piece, everything seemed on the up-and-up. The small store sold tabletop games, but its main purpose was to sell and mass-print lottery tickets. The employee answered as many questions as he could, and Jackpocket’s lottery licenses were displayed right there in the store.
