The Woman Who Outsmarted the Texas Lottery

When the Lotto Texas jackpot quietly surged to $95 million in April 2023, most players saw opportunity. Dawn Nettles saw a red flag. The retired publisher and longtime lottery oversight advocate immediately suspected something was off. Sales had suddenly skyrocketed, which meant someone might be attempting what she had long feared: buying every possible number combination to force a win. “I knew right then,” Nettles told The New Yorker. “Somebody was buying all the combinations.”

Nettles, now in her seventies, lives in Garland, just outside Dallas. For over thirty years, she’s run the Lotto Report, a publication that began as a data-rich newsletter for fellow number enthusiasts and evolved into something far more rare, a persistent check on the Texas Lottery Commission itself. What began as playful analysis turned into a decades-long campaign to hold the agency accountable, as reported by The New Yorker.

By the time the winning ticket was drawn, her suspicions were confirmed: a London-based gambling syndicate had orchestrated a bulk-buy strategy that netted them a $95 million prize. The payout, after taxes, was around $58 million. Although technically legal, the move cast a harsh spotlight on the Texas Lottery’s vulnerabilities, and for once, state officials couldn’t ignore Nettles.

Unlike others who oppose gambling for moral or religious reasons, Nettles isn’t anti-lottery. She grew up going to bingo halls and considered Las Vegas a second home. She loves the game—what she opposes is how it’s run. In her view, the lottery stopped being a public game of chance and turned into a vehicle for institutional carelessness, if not corruption.

Through the Lotto Report, she chronicled patterns, questioned odds, and tracked questionable decisions. She filed public-records requests, spoke out at commission meetings, and even installed a satellite feed at home when the lottery cut her off from receiving official results. To some, she came across as obsessive; to others, she was the only person asking the right questions.

By the time the 2023 jackpot was hit, Nettles had already been sounding the alarm about courier companies, third-party services that buy and manage lottery tickets on behalf of customers. These businesses, which grew rapidly in the 2020s, promised convenience. But to Nettles, they also introduced layers of opacity and risk.

Once the bulk-buy jackpot scandal broke, it unraveled into what Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick called “the biggest theft from the people of Texas in the history of Texas.” State leaders scrambled to explain how it happened, and much of the blame landed on the Texas Lottery Commission and its long-time executive director, Gary Grief.

Despite everything, Nettles insists she still enjoys the game. She once embraced the lottery for its promise of fun and hope. But now, she worries that unchecked expansion and unregulated technology have twisted it into something unrecognizable.

“I’m a player,” she said. “But I don’t play like I did.”