A former official with South Carolina’s government-run lottery was
found dead over the weekend, sources tell FITS.
Laura Collins, 39, was found dead in her Columbia, S.C. home.
Details regarding the cause of her death were not immediately available.
Collins’ ex-husband is Chip Collins, a Columbia, S.C. attorney. The couple had one child.
Laura Collins was at the center of a major controversy in 2009 when Lottery employees accused her of having an affair with the agency’s former director, Ernie Passailaigue.
Stay tuned for more information as it becomes available.
23 comments
I miss Passailaigue being in charge of the Lottery. The current head has let the spirit of corporate greed invade this government-sponsored institution, fixing it where many of the SC-based games are not allowing the number of winners they once did.
Paula Harper Bethea has made more money for her bosses which glorify her “performance” at SCEL but the greed-mongering involved would make many corporate CEO”s proud.
For instance, the Cash5 game used to have regular winners of between 100,000 and 4000,000. Every month or so, you had people winning these amounts. At least two or three times a year, some lucky soul would win the maximum $500,000 prize on this game. Now, that game will go two, three, or more months without a $100,000 or higher winner. Between making the drawings every single day instead of just three days a week, and what I suspect is creative manipulation of the balls drawn in each drawing which conveniently don’t match any of the numbers picked or assigned by the computer for larger prizes, SCEL makes out like a bandit on this game.
Why, you may ask, would I suspect manipulation of the balls drawn? Well, it is odd that the system shuts and quits issuing tickets on a statewide game a whole hour before the drawing and in recent months has taken well over thirty minutes in a lot of instances to post the winning numbers. Why is this? I hope that while the FBI is in SC investigating other forms of governmental corruption, that they take a close look at SCEL and their practices since Ms Bethea has taken over, there.
You are not alone in questioning these peculiar activities….
Seriously, I understand that in any game of “chance”, the house rightfully has the advantage. This is how they make money and what makes it worth while to them to run the games. That said, the greed factor at SCEL has been off the chart since Bethea walked in the door.
I remember when there was an SCEL-based game that sounded similar to Mega Millions (a multi-state game). It was one of those deals where if no one won the jackpot this drawing, the value of the pot went up for the next one. The value of that game’s pot got to be the highest or near the highest it had ever been and they had one final drawing with no winners. You would have thought that SCEL would have done the decent thing and offered a second chance drawing for that pot. Nope, PBH and company just “pocketed” that pot for SCEL’s benefit.
I wouldn’t trust any SCEL-based games while she is in there.
Where do I sign up to have my balls manipulated?
Mama Moto doesn’t take care of that already?
:-D
10+ …..
I thought Mama Moto took care of those things.
:-D
http://www.etiziano.com/I_love_logo_design/history_of_the_motorola_logo/1955_motorola_logo.jpg
There is a code-plug option for that on the APX-7000.
That would explain the lines of horny, little green men that I have observed following cops and firemen around as of late.
The larger the sum of money the easier it is to manipulate for special interest. No one outside the lottery actually understands it with the specificity needed to require changes or safeguards. It is, along with several other notable large pools of money, the perfect place to scam.
I agree 100%. I spent 20 years in government and know what you say is spot on.
This article is about the death of Ms. Collins, but there doesn’t seem to be any notices available elsewhere…..
http://www.kornegayandmoseley.com/obits/obituary.php?id=491410
A daughter, wife and mother, but it is if she never existed — truly sad….
There is more to this than meets the eye. As soon as I get clearance from my two sources I’ll post an update, and it’s a very sad and strange tale.
Did you ever hear back on whether you could post an update. I just heard the news today and am shocked by how weird/odd all this is!!
Why was this a weird/odd story…what was shocking about it?
Could you share about this sad and strange tale?
I could not stand this woman. She was selfish beyond belief, to the detriment of her daughter. But no one’s death should go completely unrecognized. Very sad!
No obit? No funeral? I’ve never seen that before.
The State had this today. Almost reads like a legal notice rather than an obit: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/thestate/obituary.aspx?n=laura-collins&pid=172162990&fhid=13834
The obit is in The State paper.