In a stunning about-face, former Texas Lottery Commission Executive Director Gary Grief1 has been hit with the exact same first-degree2 felony charge of abuse of official capacity that Travis County prosecutors quietly dropped just days after his original indictment last month.3
A Travis County grand jury re-indicted Grief on April 21, 2026,4 and a summons was issued on May 13th, one day after news of the original indictment and dismissal made headlines.
And that is what is so puzzling: why was he indicted, then the charges dropped, only to be reindicted on the exact same charges and in the same court, just a few days later?
The charge centers on at least $300,000 in alleged harm tied to the infamous April 2023 Lotto Texas drawing that handed a $95 million jackpot to a single out-of-state syndicate that received the direct cooperation of the Texas Lottery Commission (TLC). Grief and the now-defunct state agency abused their authority by green-lighting third-party “courier” services that let professional gamblers buy tickets in massive bulk online, something the Legislature never authorized; furthermore, the TLC expedited the delivery of dozens of lottery terminals to help facilitate the production of at least 11 million tickets in a 72 hour periodThose rule changes allowed the group to snap up nearly every possible number combination, rigging the outcome and disenfranchising other Texans believing they were playing a game governed by an objective government agency providing a regulatory environment that honored the rules and protected the fairness and integrity of the process.
But the story doesn’t end there. Uncovered court documents also show that the Texas Lottery Commission itself has been indicted,5 along with two former managerial figures—Ed Rogers, who has since passed away, and Clay Kidd—as “managerial agents” who, at a minimum, recklessly allowed the abuse to happen. Current Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation Executive Director Courtney Arbour has also been summoned in connection with the case.6
Governor Greg Abbott called the original dismissal “incomprehensible,”7 and plenty of taxpayers agree. When a grand jury twice finds enough evidence to charge the former head of a state agency with felony misconduct, Texans deserve straight answers, not procedural games that leave the public wondering whose side the system is really on.
This episode is yet another reminder that taxpayers need to remain vigilant to expose and root out waste, fraud, abuse, and even corruption in Texas government. Moreover, it’s a not so subtle reminder that government-run gambling isn’t just inefficient; it incentivises exactly the kind of cronyism and corruption that hurts the very people it claims to help. Texas families work hard for every dollar. They shouldn’t have to subsidize a system that preys on hope, funnels big wins to syndicates, and then ties up courtrooms for years while the scandals keep coming. True fiscal responsibility means funding schools through honest, legislator-led budgets, not through a state-sponsored predatory-gambling system.
Until lawmakers confront that reality head-on and abolish the Texas Lottery, Texas taxpayers will keep paying the price.
Texans for Fiscal Responsibility launched the Texas Anti-Predatory Gambling Alliance (TAPGA) last year. TAPGA is a project of TFR dedicated to preserving Texas’ prohibition on predatory gambling in every form and protecting taxpayers and families from the long list of harms that come with the expansion of gambling in the Lone Star State.
You can help advance TFR’s mission and projects like TAPGA by making a generous donation in support of our work and by signing our petition in support of TFR’s Legislative Priorities HERE.8
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- https://texastaxpayers.com/texas-lottery-scandal-blown-wide-open/ ↩︎
- https://x.com/bwaltens/status/2054969165383975328?s=20 ↩︎
- https://x.com/bwaltens/status/2054292780579688497?s=20 ↩︎
- https://texasscorecard.com/state/former-texas-lottery-director-gary-grief-re-indicted-after-travis-county-da-dismissed-initial-charges/ ↩︎
- https://x.com/DylMcK14/status/2054983329024237625?s=20 ↩︎
- https://www.kxan.com/news/texas/travis-county-da-reindicts-texas-lottery-director-1-month-after-dismissing-case/ ↩︎
- https://x.com/bwaltens/status/2054947944281817539?s=20 ↩︎
- https://forms.texastaxpayers.com/landing/tfr-rpt-priorities ↩︎
