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90-year-old lottery player wonders if Pick 3 game is rigged

Dear Dawg:

I'm 90 years old, and I play the Pick 3 in the lottery. I've won some money, but the last month and a half I've noticed that the zero has come up more times than it has in the past year. I wonder if someone will investigate. I'm normally not suspicious, but here I am. You should check it out and look back. You'll see more zeroes than they had in a long time. Have a great day.

— Norman Kantor, Plano

Intrigued, The Watchdog does as Kantor suggests. I print a list of all the Pick 3 results for this year. There are four different 3-number drawings every day but Sunday. Then I check how many zeroes come up.

I can see what prompted his call. For the last week of March a zero came up 13 different times. But the week before the zero came up only four times.

The week before that it came up 15 times, but then it dropped the next two weeks to only three and four times.

Is the Pick 3 game rigged? An important question since Pick 3 is the lottery's most popular game and $1 billion a year in proceeds goes to Texas schools.

The Watchdog investigates.

Lottery scandals elsewhere

Kantor has reason to be paranoid. A big lottery scandal hit other states. An Iowa man who worked as a security director for the Multi-State Lottery Association man figured out how to beat the system.

Eddie Tipton's trick was to write computer code for random generators that picked pre-ordained numbers. He was accused of trying to win money from lotteries in Iowa, Colorado, Wisconsin, Kansas and Oklahoma.

He also allegedly put the rigged code on lottery computers in Indiana and Arkansas. Texas was not involved.

Tipton was convicted of fraud and sentenced to prison. He remains free on appeal.

But The Watchdog learned there's a big difference between what Tipton did and what Kantor worries about.

The Pick 3 is not generated by computer, but by ball drawings. There's never been a ball drawing scandal in Texas, says Dawn Nettles, owner of

The Garland lottery expert and watchdog says ball drawings are trustworthy because of security procedures in Austin.

Still, she acknowledges that it's possible.

"All they have to do is weight a ball," she says.

Dawn Nettles runs and is considered Texas' No. 1 watchdog on the state lottery.&nbsp;(<p>(Mark Graham for The Texas Tribune)</p>)

(Mark Graham for The Texas Tribune)


A colorful guy

Meet Norman Kantor, the suspicious one.

When the Brooklyn native moved to Texas, he did it in a big way. He owned a burlesque theater in Dallas in the 1950s, the Theatre Lounge, on what was then Forest Avenue (now Martin Luther King Boulevard Jr.). He knew Jack Ruby.

A matchbook from more than 60 years ago when Kantor owned a Dallas burlesque club.

He's a widower now, and a highlight of his day, after watching The Price is Right on TV, is to go to his neighborhood convenience store and buy $5 worth of tickets. He likes to play 617, his birthday.

The best part, he tells me, are his friends at the store. They hang together and talk lotto numbers. It's fun.

At the store, zeros have been a topic of conversation. "The zeroes don't come up that much and all of a sudden, boom, boom, boom," he says.

So I make the rounds of experts to learn more.

Niloo Jalilvand, Dallas mathematician: "Each of the 10 digits should occur 1/10th of the time in the long run, but any particular digit, such as 0, can occur more frequently than that in the short run. This sequence of lottery winners would likely be regarded as a short run."

Kelly Cripe of the Texas lottery: "The entire drawing studio and secured room are monitored by surveillance and alarm systems.... Balls used are always handled with gloves to avoid the transfer of any oils or substances that might affect their weight."

J. Winston Krause, chairman, Texas Lottery Commission: "This is a fair game. I can't explain the zeroes, but I cannot imagine that anybody is trying to manipulate it. ... We want to run a fair game, run it well and raise money for the school systems in Texas."

Dawn Nettles of "I don't defend the Texas lottery very often. The drawings are not rigged. There's no way the Texas lottery is cheating on these drawings."

Tight security to protect game's integrity

I learned of more security procedures. The cameras in the Austin drawing studio are operated by robots to cut the number of people in the studio.

The drawing area is locked with an alarm and motion detectors. There's also a seal on the door with a number that's logged in whenever the seal is broken. Ball sets and machines are stored behind the same security.

Balls are weighed regularly. Machines are rotated monthly. And the ball sets are selected at random.

Drawings are videotaped and stored. Results are reviewed by an "independent statistician."

Hope this helps Norm Kantor. He and his pals can continue to play Pick 3 without fear or favor.

Norman Kantor, 90, holds the Texas lottery numbers published in an issue of The Dallas Morning News on Wednesday, April 5, 2017, at his home in Plano.(<p>(Ashley Landis/The Dallas Morning News)</p>)

(Ashley Landis/The Dallas Morning News)


Coming Sunday: Did AT&T customer service improve after The Watchdog met the CEO?

Staff writer Marina Trahan Martinez contributed to this report.


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