Australian Gambler Zeljko Ranogajec Among Big Winners in Texas Lottery Scandal

^{A Powerball ticket from the Texas Lottery, which came under scrutiny after Ranogajec and Marantelli exploited the system to win big. (Photo: John Angeli / UPI & Alamy Live News)}

On April 22, 2023, a team managed to buy about 99 percent of all available number combinations in the Texas Lottery, ultimately winning a $95 million jackpot. That incident eventually led to investigations from state officials and the dismantling of the Texas Lottery Commission earlier this year. And at the center of it all was a gambler known by casinos around the world as “The Joker.”

That’s the nickname of Australian gambler and businessman Zeljko Ranogajec, a man widely considered one of the most successful advantage gamblers in the world.

From Blackjack to Lottery Wins, a Long History of Advantage Play

According to multiple media reports since the big win, Ranogajec partnered with Bernard Marantelli to take down the Texas Lottery. The two are partners in Colossus Bets, a British bookmaking firm, and appear to be the team behind ROOK TX, the syndicate that won the $95 million jackpot.

That’s far from the first big win that Ranogajec has collected in his long career. He apparently began by winning millions via card counting and advantage play in blackjack games, first in Australia and around the world. That activity got him banned from many casinos but also earned him an induction into the Blackjack Hall of Fame.

Ranogajec would go on to win millions finding advantage plays in areas including keno and horse racing, often taking advantage of rebate deals he had negotiated with betting operators and the use of large betting syndicates. 

But in the United States, the man known as the Joker was far from a celebrity gambler, at least outside of the world of casino executives who keep an eye out for known advantage players. That began to change when he and Marantelli launched their scheme to win that 2023 jackpot in Texas.

In order to be successful, the duo had to employ a team to purchase and print tickets from dozens of machines over three days. They ultimately covered just about every combination possible; the ones they avoided, according to Wall Street Journal reporter Joe Wallace, were those that might result in a large split of the jackpot. Outside of those combinations, they weren’t too worried about a split, due to the relatively low number of tickets sold for reach drawing.

“That was important information to them because it showed that there weren’t very many competitors,” Wallace told Texas Standard. “You do not want to split the winnings, so you do not go for low numbers or numbers which could be a birthday or something like that.”

Aftermath Leads to Massive Changes in Texas Lottery

Ultimately, Ranogajec and Marantelli were successful, collecting $57.8 million after taxes. But that led to a fury of backlash in Texas, where state officials blamed the Texas Lottery Commission for allowing the mass purchase of tickets and even questioned whether laws were broken. There have been lawsuits filed against ROOK TX and Texas Rangers are still investigating the situation, though it’s unclear what might have been illegal about the tactics used.

What did occur was a backlash against the lottery itself. A woman named Kristen Moriarty who won an $83.5 million jackpot on Feb. 17, 2025 had to wait months before Texas officials would release her winnings after she used a DraftKings-branded lottery courier to purchase her tickets – though she said she spent only $20, rather than $26 million. Moriarty finally collected $34 million after taxes in August.

The controversies led some state lawmakers to call for the abolition of the Texas Lottery, though the loss of revenue made that a non-starter. Instead, the Texas Lottery Commission was abolished, and online ticket sales were banned, with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation now overseeing lottery operations. 

Behind it all, there’s still plenty of uncertainty over just how involved the Joker truly was in the win that sparked these massive changes. There’s no public accounting of how much he personally invested or won in the drawing, nor has he made public comments about the win. 

“The winnings were claimed through a Delaware limited partnership,” Wallace said. “All we had in our story was a comment from a representative of this limited partnership, a lawyer based in New Jersey who had actually sent in the winning ticket to the commission claiming the prize.”