Texas lawmakers are proposing legislation to make it difficult for groups to coordinate ticket purchases that can lead to guaranteed payoffs from the state lottery. The so-called “blanket buying” schemes would be outlawed, targeting the retailers enabling such strategies to grab all of the possible winning numbers.
Texas State Senators Paul Bettencourt (R-D7) and Bryan Hughes (R-D1) have introduced Senate Bill 1346, which states that a “sales agent may not knowingly sell or allow the sale of tickets for a lottery game involving a drawing to one or more persons attempting to purchase all possible winning tickets for the drawing.”
In 2023, a group that won an $83 million jackpot had allegedly coordinated to purchase $25 million worth of Texas lottery tickets. This can happen when a jackpot grows big enough that its lump sum cash value exceeds the cost of buying every possible combination of numbers.
That incident, which involved a group called Rook TX, drew attention to the importance of the now-defunct lottery courier service Lottery.com and its retailer partner to the scheme.
A lottery courier is a service that allows consumers to purchase tickets over the internet, including from outside the state. The courier buys the ticket on the player’s behalf, charging a service fee. To make the business efficient, the courier often has a direct relationship with a particular retailer, which is set up to handle large volumes of ticket orders.
Lottery Couriers Could be Legalized, Regulated Under Separate Bill
Texas is in the process of banning lottery courier services following that controversy. Until now, they’ve been actively welcomed by the state lottery, largely thanks to the decisions of its former director, who has been named a defendant in a fraud suit against Rook TX.
Although banning couriers would make it harder to execute a blanket-buying scheme, it wouldn’t make it impossible. The sponsors of SB1346 say retailers should be held responsible if they sell tickets in large quantities to one group or a courier service outside the state. Senate Bill 1346 would hold retailers accountable for knowingly taking part in a strategy that corners the market on possible lottery combinations.
Meanwhile, other lawmakers have suggested that courier services should be legalized and regulated. Proponents say that with proper oversight, regulated lottery ticket courier services could actually be the ones sounding the alarm over suspicious buying patterns. At the very least, the state would have background information on people performing such a service. Elsewhere, similar arguments have been made for the role of regulated sportsbooks in preventing match-fixing.
State Representative John Bucy III (D-D136) has submitted House Bill 3201. That piece of proposed legislation lays out a process for licensing lottery couriers and their employees. It defines a lottery courier as “a person licensed under this chapter to act as an agent for a player in purchasing a ticket.”
The Bucy bill would also ban the use of credit cards for purchasing lottery tickets and prohibit lottery ticket couriers from transactions with anyone under 18 years of age.
