Lottery.com executive says former lottery commissioner approved mass ticket sale
AUSTIN (Nexstar) — Five hours into a marathon Senate Committee on State Affairs hearing, former Lottery.com Chief Operating Officer Greg Potts dropped a bombshell about the April 2023 Lotto Texas drawing. For the $95 million jackpot, an entity named Rook TX found a way to spend about $25 million for nearly all the possible number combinations. Lottery.com has been accused of helping them acquire those tickets.
At Monday’s hearing, Potts accused former Lottery Commission Executive Director Gary Grief of giving Lottery.com the go-ahead to carry out a mass ticket purchase for a European brokerage.
“When the project was presented to the corporation, (former Lottery.com CEO) Mark (Gustavson) came to me, we discussed it, and Mark would not move forward without full agreement with the Texas Lottery Commission,” Potts told senators. “We were surprised when we contacted the… Texas Lottery Commission. We were very surprised that the answer was yes. We fully expected that they would laugh at us and say, ‘Well, no, of course, you can’t do this,’ so we only did after we were told that we were able to move forward under the lottery license that we had.”
Senator Paul Bettencourt, R – Houston, pressed Potts on who exactly at the Lottery Commission approved the operation.
“I believe the ask was made to the executive director,” Potts said.
“Who was by name?” Bettencourt questioned.
“Gary Grief,” Potts replied.
Immediately after the exchange, Sen. Bob Hall, R – Edgewood, said “He just confirmed what I’ve been saying in the layout. (Is there) any doubt [in] anybody’s mind that this was engineered from the inside? It was not clever people on the outside [who] figured out how to beat the system that’s within our state government, this thing was hatched [and] implemented — a criminal conspiracy — inside our state government.”
On Tuesday morning, Grief’s attorney Sam Bassett emphasized his position that the former lottery director did nothing wrong, and is planning to fully cooperate with any formal investigation. Bassett said Grief has not yet been approached by the Texas Rangers, one day after Gov. Greg Abbott ordered them to investigate the April 2023 $95 million Lotto Texas drawing and the Feb. 16, 2025, $83.5 million Lotto Texas drawing, won on the app ‘Jackpocket’.
Learning more about the ‘bulk purchase’
Potts also confirmed other key details about how the drawing went down. He said he didn’t know about Rook TX until after the drawings but did know Lottery.com was gathering tickets for a foreign entity.
“We were approached by a broker who represented a company that promotes ticket syndicates, that’s what they’re called in Europe, as a part of their business model,” Potts said. “It was never presented they wanted to buy all (the possible number combinations),” but Potts did mention they wanted a large amount.
That’s when Potts says he and Gustavson asked the Lottery Commission if they could process the order, allegedly receiving the go-ahead.
Potts confirmed the operation took place in a facility in Spicewood for the sole purpose of printing lottery tickets, which blatantly violates the Lottery Commission’s rules stating a licensed retailer must not only be in the business of selling lottery tickets.
“The relationship between the company and the lottery pre-dated me,” Potts said. “The only answer I have been told… is that the Texas Lottery Commission was fully aware of the operation, they had been there. They had seen the facility multiple times over the years that it had been there.”
At the time, Potts says, they weren’t even acting as a courier anymore due to investigations into the company, even citing a former executive being federally charged with fraud last week. Due to those issues, Potts said they had very little staff at the time, requiring the brokerage they worked with to supply workers to fulfill the orders.
Lastly, Potts said he believed QR codes, which are only allowed to be scanned at Lottery terminals if they’re generated by the Texas Lottery mobile app, were used to create the mass tickets, although he can’t say for certian.
“I was not on-site at all,” Potts said. “I have been made aware that they used QR codes… My understanding is that those QR codes were not part of the Texas lottery application. But I cannot vouch for that because I was not there.”
In response to Potts saying “the buck both started and stopped with (Gustavson),” Gustavson replied, “I will say simply that Greg Potts committed perjury.”
Gustavson continued “My demands as CEO of Lottery.com [were] almost entirely laser-focused on getting complex financial filings reinstated through a proper audit process, something that was paramount to the company’s [survival]. Mr. Potts casually brought the Lotto Texas event to my attention just days prior to it occurring, and never once did he inform me that there were going to be multiple couriers involved, that the plan was to purchase all the lottery tickets, that illegal software and hardware would be used, and that former Lottery.com founders… would be involved in the ticket printing scheme.”
Gustavson continued to make several accusations of Potts’ role in the April 2023 drawing, saying “Greg Potts was, in my opinion, the ring leader,” adding “It is my hope that a full and thorough investigation will be conducted that will uncover the whole truth, and that Greg Potts will be held accountable for his knowingly false statements and assertions he made under oath in front of the Texas Senate on Feb. 24, 2025.”
Gustavson also said he cannot confirm that Lottery.com or Potts reached out to the Texas Lottery Commission before the mass purchase event.
Potts declined to respond to Gustavson’s comments. The Texas Lottery Commission declined to comment, saying they don’t comment on open investigations.
