Texas Lottery Chief Abruptly Resigns Amid Investigations and Funding Crisis

The executive director of the Texas Lottery Commission suddenly cashed out on Monday, resigning from his post amid a pair of investigations against the state agency.Ryan Mindell’s tenure comes to an end just after a year after taking the reins from Gary Grief, the agency’s longest-serving executive director, himself resigned in 2024. The sudden departure also comes after former Commissioner Clark Scott resigned in late February, according to The Texas Tribune. Texas Lottery Commission Chairman Robert Rivera confirmed Mr. Mindell’s resignation in a statement but did not elaborate on his reason for leaving.“Ryan Mindell notified the Texas Lottery Commission board of his resignation, effective today, April 21,” he said. Sergio Rey, the agency’s Chief Financial Officer, has been appointed Acting Deputy Executive Director of the Texas Lottery. The Commission board will consider its selection process for a new executive director at its next open meeting, scheduled for April 29.”All have left under a storm of scrutiny and investigation from state lawmakers over the commission’s use of third-party couriers like the Jackpocket app have created a rigged gaming system rife with opportunity for schemes.“(Courier services) violate the spirit of the law,” Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick said to KXAN in February. “I don’t care what kind of changes they want to make, it does not solve the issue. The lottery was established to have cash tickets, so we don’t have kids buying tickets… not for an app to be a digital courier, buying thousands and thousands or millions of tickets.”His comments came after the TLC advised the winner of $83.5 million jackpot — the fifth largest in the state’s history — may not receive a payout because the Texas Rangers were investigating the February 17 drawing. The woman had used Jackpocket to purchase $20 worth of tickets.Investigators with the Rangers were also directed by Governor Abbott to look into a $95 million jackpot from 2023 where a group of people were alleged to have gamed the use of courier services to purchase more than $25 million worth of tickets to secure almost ever combination of numbers that could be drawn.In addition to the pair of investigations, the lottery commission could be in danger of shutting down entirely after the State’s House of Representatives passed their new budget with zero funding for the agency, a move that was doubled down upon when the passed a second non-binding motion. Since entering in the Lone Star State in 2019, courier services have quickly become the top retailers for Texas Lottery sales, making up over $223 million in sales for 2023 alone, according to estimates by the Legislative Budget Board.Courier services allow players to buy tickets online in which the third party will physically purchase tickets on their behalf and then send photos of the stub.“The user is placing an order within the state of Texas, the courier is receiving that order at the fulfillment center, and purchasing at the retailer — in our case, Winner’s Corner,” Peter Sullivan, Jackpocket founder and CEO said during a February 24 state senate hearing. Winner’s Corner, an Austin-based store owned by Jackpocket, enables them to purchase tickets for users of their app. With lax regulation around these types of retail stores, lawmakers in Texas have voiced their concern regarding the third-party courier services, claiming that they are illegal under current state law which says that in order to be a licensed lottery retailer you cannot be in the sole business of selling tickets.While anyone can walk into Winner’s Corner to purchase tickets in person, it is rare. Dozens of employees are usually processing thousands of orders and scanning the tickets to send to customers or playing scratch off games on their behalf.“It takes a lot of people to keep the flow going, because once it stops for maybe a couple minutes, like something happens to the system, the system shuts off or machines stop working, [we] would be behind maybe one thousand tickets,” a former Winner’s Corner worker recently said to The Texas Tribune.Despite being in a section of Austin with little foot traffic, Winner’s Corner generated the most lottery sales in the state, eclipsing the sales by the second highest store which sold under a quarter of Winner’s Corner’s total sales for the year.

Texas Lottery Chief Abruptly Resigns Amid Investigations and Funding Crisis

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