CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) – The Wyoming Lottery Corporation is pressing a civil lawsuit that accuses a Cheyenne man of trying to sabotage its relationship with national lottery organizations.
The lottery is seeking a state district court order banning Edward Atchison from making what it calls more false allegations.
Atchison, 66, has worked as a counselor on problem gambling in Nevada and is director of a group called the Wyoming Council on Problem Gambling. Through letters to national groups and letters published in newspapers around the state, he has pressed the Wyoming Lottery to do more to address problem gambling.
In January, the Casper Star-Tribune published a letter from Atchison regarding the Wyoming Lottery. “This particular lottery is a non-caring rogue running wild without the proper controls or oversight by state government and will be much more destructive than any benefit it says it is making,” Atchison stated. “A good lottery cares for its players as human beings, not as cash cows.”
Cheyenne lawyer Matthew D. Kaufman represents the lottery corporation in the lawsuit.
Kaufman said Monday that the lottery corporation’s main business is selling tickets in multi-state games, including Powerball and Mega Millions. He said selling those tickets requires that the corporation be in good standing with organizations such as the Multi-State Lottery Association and the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries.
Kaufman said Atchison was contacting those organizations and saying that it was not operating according to its statutory mandates. The Wyoming Legislature authorized the lottery in 2013 and tickets went on sale last fall.
“He refused to stop doing that so the lottery felt like it had to take action to protect itself,” Kaufman said. “He’s in effect threatening the existence of the lottery by doing that.”
Cheyenne lawyer Tim Kingston represents Atchison. Kingston says he plans to file a response this week saying the lottery lawsuit is baseless and intended to discourage public criticism. He said Atchison has a right to voice his opinions and hasn’t defamed anyone.
“Mr. Atchison has been a critic of the Wyoming lottery, primarily coming from his interest in people who might have gambling addictions or gambling problems,” Kingston said. “He has a lot of experience in that area as a mental health professional. He’s been concerned about it, and raised a number of issues.”
Atchison said Monday that he was surprised to be served with the lawsuit. “It makes me sick, everything I stand for, everything as an American and a human being, they want to put an end to it,” he said.
Atchison said there’s one other person on the board of his group, the Wyoming Council on Problem Gambling. He said he has pushed for the Wyoming Lottery to put money into programs to help address problem gambling but has been dissatisfied with the result.
While Wyoming has the lowest population of any state, Atchison said the lottery is saturating the market with more than 400 retail outlets. “The probability of problem gambling is going to be even higher when you’re mixing their mass marketing effort to sell tickets to a limited group of people in a small area,” he said.
The state law that created the lottery specifies that the Wyoming Lottery must put up to $200,000 a year in unclaimed prize money into programs to be developed with the Wyoming Department of Health to address problem gambling.
Louise Plata, chief operations officer at the Wyoming Lottery, said Monday said lottery officials have been meeting with officials at the Wyoming Department of Health to begin to assess how large the issue of problem gambling is in the state. She said prize-winners have six months to claim their winnings and said the lottery won’t have unclaimed prize money available to fund problem-gambling programs required in the law until the end of the state fiscal year this summer.
Plata said the lottery already is distributing information on national problem gambling programs with its instructions on how to play the lottery.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press.
