Senate Leader Questions Lottery Settlement

Article as it appeared in Hearst Media

HARTFORD — Senate Minority Leader Len Fasano wants to know why the Connecticut Lottery Corp. accepted $300,000 from its chief contractor, when it originally sought about $4.2 million in damages for the glitches and hacking that led to the closure of its popular 5 Card Cash game.

The North Haven Republican, in a letter Wednesday to Frank Farricker, acting director of the lottery, requested details on the settlement with Scientific Games, the international gambling giant based in Las Vegas.

“We have a right to know how they made the decisions,” Fasano said in an evening interview. “When you have some questions like this, you have to have the opinion of lawyers.”

In response, Farricker, in a letter released Wednesday night, said he made the decision to accept less than a dime on the dollar after determining that the game was successful despite the hacking, which resulted in a loss of about 6.25 percent.

“My determination, which I shared with the (lottery) Board of Directors, included both a clear-eyed analysis of the situation, as well as a determination that we needed CLC to embark in a different direction than staff has previously undertaken,” Farricker wrote to Fasano. “As I said there may have been merit to the case, there may have not.”

More than a dozen retail lottery sales people were arrested on felony charges after the hacking was discovered in November 2015. In April, Anne M. Noble claimed about $4.2 million in damages and charged that Scientific Games failed to meet its contractual duty to provide a tamper-proof game. Some retailers found that they were able to manipulate their computer screens, void losing poker hands, and sell themselves winning hands.

On Tuesday, Hearst Connecticut Media reported that the lottery settled for a fraction of what it originally claimed that Scientific Games owed for the defects and thefts that occurred in hacked lot-tery vendor terminals
before the instant game was terminated in November 2015.

The lottery, a quasi-public corporation that allows its operations to skirt some requirements to which other state agencies have to adhere, settled on the $300,000 plus the costs of retraining its sales and information technology staff.

“This is what happens when a quasi-public gets so out of hand — they create a fiefdom and they run it like their own business,” said Fasano, a lawyer who also wants further details on the job status of Noble, the former lottery president who is now an adviser to the appointed lottery board. “It’s just emblematic of what I believe that a lot of these quasi-publics have come to over the years.”