Ryan Mindell, the embattled executive director of the Texas Lottery Commission, has resigned, according to a terse press release published on the agency’s website Monday afternoon.
Mindell’s departure comes almost exactly one year to the day after he took over the top job at the agency, in the wake of the abrupt resignation of longtime director Gary Grief. Prior to that, Mindell, an attorney, had served as deputy executive director, operations director and assistant general counsel.
Mindell could not be reached for comment. A spokesman for the lottery commission said the agency would have no further information because it does not comment on personnel matters.
State Sen. Bob Hall, an Edgewood Republican and a longtime lottery critic, hailed the move as a step forward. “I am in favor of doing anything that puts an end to lottery in Texas while we protect the money that was going to veterans,” Hall told the Austin American-Statesman. Most lottery proceeds — nearly $2 billion a year — fund public schools.
Despite his nearly decade-long tenure at the lottery commission, Mindell landed at the top spot at one of the most challenging eras the agency has experienced since the Texas Lottery began more than 30 years ago. Through bad timing, Mindell became the face of the commission’s growing problems.
The Houston Chronicle has spent the last year detailing a controversial Lotto Texas game in 2023, when a single buyer essentially purchased the $95 million jackpot by buying up virtually every possible number combination — 25.8 million in all. The big prize was worth a one-time payment of $58 million. Experts consulted by the newspaper calculated the winner — an anonymous corporation called RookTX — cleared more than $20 million after expenses.
As the Chronicle has reported, the big buy was arranged by a man from Malta and through a London betting company that was founded by a banker-turned professional gambler named Bernard Marantelli and a mysterious Tasmanian gambler named Zeljko Ranogajec, who had a history of buying, or trying to buy lottery draws.
Recently, the Wall Street Journal confirmed the two were behind the big Texas buy.
The bigger problem for the Texas Lottery Commission, however, was the agency’s role in abetting the operation. One of the organizers testified to legislators that when the gamblers first approached his company — a struggling online corporation called Lottery.com — for help carrying it out, he felt sure the state agency would say no.
“We fully expected that they would laugh at us and say, ‘Well, no, of course you can’t do this,’” said chief operating officer Greg Potts. Instead, the lottery commission gave its approval, Potts said.
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As the new director, Mindell was left to face lawmakers’ growing wrath about the tilted lotto game, as well as the agency’s failure to corral couriers. In the first months of this year, it seemed as though Mindell was being hauled up in front of another legislative panel every week for yet another tongue-lashing.
In an effort to catch up and mollify lawmakers, Mindell changed lottery rules to prevent another bulk buy operation by professional gamblers. He also wrote new rules to prohibit courier companies from operating in Texas.
Legislators still have several pending bills to reform the lottery agency. One would ban players from acquiring “substantially all winning combinations.” Another would simply end the lottery.
Meanwhile, two civil lawsuits have been filed seeking to recover money from players who felt they were cheated out of money in the April 2023 game. Gov. Greg Abbott has ordered the Texas Rangers to investigate the 2023 game. Attorney General Ken Paxton has announced his office is also conducting its own inquiry.
See here, here, here, and here for some background. The Chron has done a lot of deep reporting on this story, not all of which I’ve blogged about, so read this article and follow its links to get the fullest picture. The thing to note is that outgoing director Mindell wasn’t the guy in charge when a lot of this was going down. He was trying to fix some of the problems that had been created, as the Trib story notes.
The lottery commission is also currently under review by the Sunset Commission. The commission, which reviews an agency before legislators choose to either pass a bill extending the agency or allow it to be abolished, criticized former director Grief in reports as comfortable operating in “gray areas” of the law to allow couriers to flourish in the state.
The report also stated, however, that evidence suggested Mindell had raised concerns about Grief’s decisions. In the wake of the “bulk purchase” of over 25 million tickets in April 2023, Mindell worked to implement policies restricting mass ticket printing, largely under the scrutiny of legislators. Mindell released a policy statement in February indicating the lottery commission now believed couriers violate current statutes, a switch from years of the agency’s claims it lacked the authority to do so.
“I think that when I became executive director, there were certainly things that I wanted to change about the tone, tenor and approach of the agency, and that’s what I’ve been focused on,” Mindell said during a House Licensing Committee hearing in March.
So I’m curious if Mindell was forced out for some reason, if he’d just had enough of this crap, or if there’s some other shoe about to drop. Maybe everyone was mad enough at the Lottery Commission that going full clean slate is the current consensus. Whatever the case, it’s interesting that it happened this way. Reform Austin has more.