Eddie Tipton, 54, tried to pull off one of the biggest lottery scams in history.

Tipton admitted in an Iowa court that he created a piece of malware in the form of a DLL file which he then loaded to the secure computers of the Multi-State Lottery Association (MSLA). That system runs the lotteries in 33 states, including the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Tipton was able to carry out the scam because he served as the company's computer information security director.

The computers are housed in a secure room with 24-hour monitoring, but Tipton was able to alter the surveillance system. The camera's would only record one second for each minute. This gave Tipton time to insert a USB drive into the system.

The DDL allowed Tipton to predict numbers on three days of the year, on two particular days of the week and after a certain time of the day. The file was also coded to delete itself after a certain period.

Authorities got lucky because one of the files did not self-delete.

Tipton recruited two accomplices to carry out the scheme. Tommy Tipton, 53, his brother, a former Texas magistrate judge and police officer; and Robert Rhodes, a Texas businessman and Tipton's former colleague at an IT company.

Tipton is facing 25 years in prison and a fine of $1.4 million in restitution while his brother must pay restitution of $800,000.

Source: Bleeping Computer