Bought ticket through lottery courier
An anonymous Texas woman is getting close to losing her patience with the state over an $83.5 million lottery win that she has yet to receive. The sticking point: her use of a lottery courier to buy the ticket.
According to the Texas Tribune, the woman and her lawyer, Randy Howry, met with representatives from the Texas Lottery Commission on Tuesday, but were told that she would not receive a penny until multiple investigations into her win were completed.
“She played by all the rules in play at the time,” Howry said, adding that because of politicians, she has been “caught in the crossfire.”
The longer the saga gets drawn out, the closer Howry and his client get to initiating legal action.
Jackpocket the beast of the courier industry
The woman bought 10 tickets through Jackpocket, the largest lottery courier service in the US. Couriers buy lottery tickets on behalf of customers and then either pay them their winnings directly or give them the ticket to cash in themselves if the winnings are above a certain threshold.
Jackpocket is available in 18 states plus Washington, D.C. Customers can go to Jackpocket’s website or app, fund their account, and then purchase tickets in the state where they are physically located, similar to how online poker works in the US.
Jackpocket’s couriers then buy tickets on the customer’s behalf and take the necessary steps to be sure that the tickets are associated with the specific account. The company does not take a piece of a customer’s winnings.
The woman who won the $83.5 million used Jackpocket because she felt it was safer than going to a lottery outlet herself.
Texas Lt. Governor is on the case!
One aspect of some couriers that makes the process seem more suspicious, is that some own or contract with retail operations whose sole purpose is to mass-print lottery tickets. In this case, the winning ticket was printed at a Jackpocket-owned retailer named Winners Corner.
Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick visited Winners Corner in February, the day after the woman won, and posted a video of his interaction on social media. Rather than a typical convenience store or similar, the outlet was a small storefront that sold tabletop games and lottery tickets. There were no secrets – its and Jackpocket’s licenses from the Texas Lottery Commission were displayed prominently. It is not doing anything illegal.
But Dan Patrick did not like what he saw, claiming that someone winning $83.5 million on a ticket bought by Jackpocket at a retailer owned by Jackpocket (and Jackpocket was bought by DraftKings last year for $750 million) could make the public lose confidence in the integrity of the lottery.
In the meantime, as mentioned, nothing illegal appears to have happened. People just aren’t accustomed to lottery tickets being bought through a third-party service rather than in-person at a gas station. For many, courier services are more convenient and safer than buying in person.
