The fate of the Texas Lottery Commission was uncertain during most of the recent legislative session, after several scandals embroiled the agency overseeing one of the largest lotteries in the nation.
In 2022, an investigation found that the agency had sold more than half a million tickets to out-of-state players, which is illegal. Then in 2023, a team of international players gamed the system to win a multi-million dollar jackpot.
While lawmakers did not disband the agency in its entirety this year, the whereabouts and fate of its last commissioner remains unknown.
Dave Lieber, an investigative columnist for the Dallas Morning News, said he lays a lot of the blame for mismanagement at the agency on former executive director Gary Grief.
“He started working at the lottery when it opened in 1992 and he worked there up until last year and for 15 years he was the executive director,” Lieber said. “He was very proud of the fact that they were pulling in almost $100 million in ticket sales. And he was always about the numbers. Keep the numbers up, every year needs to be better than the year before.”
Grief has dropped off the map recently, Lieber said.
“Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said the Texas Rangers can’t find him. He’s apparently either not answering the door… or he just is not there,” Lieber said. “It’s just gossip – normally it’s gossip – but when the lieutenant governor of the state tells you he’s not to be found, then I take it a little bit seriously.”
The current investigation is looking into a global syndicate of gamblers from around the world who pooled their money together to buy $26 million worth of $1 Lotto Texas tickets.
“They bought nine out of every 10 tickets, and the other 10% were bought by individual players who really had no chance of winning because the group had a 90% purchase rate,” Lieber said. “And they’re not supposed to purchase lottery tickets by phone or by tablet, by internet, and that’s what they did here. That’s the only way they could have bought $26 million worth of tickets in 72 hours.”
Gov. Greg Abbott has a bill on his desk right now which would eliminate the Lottery Commission and move the entire Texas Lottery over to the Department of Licensing and Regulation.
“If he signs it, then that’s what happens,” Lieber said. “If he doesn’t sign it, it can still become law, even without a signature. And if he vetoes it, then it won’t happen, but I don’t think he’s going to veto it because this has been a mess, and this is a chance to clear it up.”
Lieber said lawmakers passed this law in part because the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation is one of the better-run departments. The bill also puts the game on a two-year probation period.
» GET MORE NEWS FROM AROUND THE STATE: Sign up for Texas Standard’s weekly newsletters
“If it doesn’t work out after a couple of years, they can go back to it and make changes or even kill the lottery,” Lieber said. “(Lawmakers) came close to actually killing the lottery this year. There were a lot of legislators that just wanted to vote it out of existence, but there weren’t enough to carry.”
There are also ongoing lawsuits about what happened with the lottery in 2023 when the international syndicate won the pot.
“There’s one little guy who filed a lawsuit saying that if they hadn’t given that payout to the gamblers, he would have won the very next month. So he’s suing for a million dollars because he felt like he lost the opportunity to win almost a hundred million dollars,” he said.
“Moving forward, I think what we can see is that the lottery is for the first time in a long time, it’s gonna have a lot of people watching it. I also wouldn’t be surprised if there was a grand jury investigation that found criminality because there’s a whole bunch of laws that could have been broken here by various people. So this thing is just starting. It’s really not even close to the finish line.”
