Lottery Fallout

The Lottery Corp.’s security director, accused of negligence in a million-dollar blunder at a Jan. 1 drawing, is retiring, still cites “vendetta.”

The Connecticut Lottery Corp.’s $139,000-a-year security director, Alfred W. Dupuis, has been off the job since a February internal investigation concluded he was guilty of “gross negligence” when subordinates made a million-dollar blunder at a Jan. 1 drawing — and now it turns out that he won’t be returning.

The 21-year lottery official retired effective Thursday, eight and a half months after he was placed on a paid administrative leave Feb. 15. He was scheduled to return Feb. 23 and justify why he shouldn’t be disciplined and possibly fired.

DuPuis, 62, never returned, though, and instead used family and medical leaves that were available to him until he finally put in his retirement papers on Oct. 19.

His pension has not been fully calculated, but it appears it would be around $47,000 a year under an option that would give his wife 50 percent of the lifetime benefit if she survives him, according to his application to the state Comptroller’s retirement division. His top three years’ salary averaged $145,978, including earnings above his regular pay such as “longevity payments.”

DuPuis’ departure doesn’t relieve a hangover from which the

$1.2 billion agency is still suffering over the botched selection of winning numbers in the New Year’s Super Draw.

The short-term result of that Jan. 1 snafu was a do-over drawing in mid-January, a $1 million loss to the state, and disciplinary actions including unpaid suspensions against lower-ranking employees of

both the lottery and Department of Consumer Protection who mishandled the drawing despite possessing step-by-step, illustrated instructions.

But a big, lingering result is DuPuis’ still-pending “whistleblower complaint” that lottery officials’ allegation against him was the result of a vendetta over his role three years ago in exposing retailer fraud in the scandal-plagued 5 Card Cash game — which had to be shut down, and ultimately spawned 15 arrests.

DuPuis could not be reached for comment.

Present and former lottery officials have denied his retaliation complaint, which he filed in May with the state Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities. A hearing/trial is scheduled in April, and a CHRO spokesperson said in an email that “[h]is retirement from state service does not preclude him from pursuing his claim. As long as he filed timely, then the case will go forward.”

Auditors: ‘Retaliatory Motives’?

Another repercussion from the New Year’s drawing disaster materialized Friday in the form of a new report issued by the state Auditors of Public Accounts, who said the lottery’s actions toward DuPuis could have resulted from “retaliatory motives” — although they left that final determination to the CHRO

The auditors’ report came after their investigation of suspicions voiced last

March by two key legislators that the lottery’s abortive disciplinary proceeding against DuPuis might have been payback for his “forthright testimony” during 2017 investigative hearings into the 5 Card Cash scandal.

Those two legislators — Senate Republican leader Len Fasano and Rep. Joe Verrengia, co-chairman of the legislative public safety committee, which conducted the 2017 hearings — included that “payback” scenario in a letter to the Department of Consumer Protection, which regulates lottery games. DCP then referred it to the auditors for investigation.

On Friday, state auditors John Geragosian and Rob Kane wrote to Verrengia and Fasano, telling them: “Through our review, we concluded that the charge of gross neglect and the associated administrative leave with pay could have resulted from arbitrary or retaliatory motives. The specific charge of ‘gross neglect’ had never been leveled against any other CLC [Connecticut Lottery Corp.] employee in its history.

“CLC did not provide a clear explanation of how it arrived at the gross neglect charge. In addition, when we asked CLC management for any communication or documentation on how they determined the gross neglect standard, they did not produce anything to support the standard. The Department of Consumer Protection [has stated] that the mistakes in the January 1, 2018 Super Draw were caused by human error and that the entire team should have caught the error. …

“Mr. DuPuis began working at CLC in 1997, and had never been disciplined for any reason. There is evidence that Mr. DuPuis’ issues with CLC leadership began shortly after he pointed out the vulnerabilities in the 5 Card Cash game in January of 2015.”

The auditors stopped short of making a final finding on DuPuis’ claims, and said the CHRO “is the appropriate independent authority to definitely determine whether the circumstances that resulted in the conclusion that Mr. DuPuis was guilty of ‘gross neglect in the execution of his duties’ is warranted and whether CLC retaliated against Mr. DuPuis.”

Lottery officials deny DuPuis’ allegations, the auditors said in their report, adding that Matthew Stone, the lottery’s general counsel, had told them “there has been zero retaliation” by anyone at the lottery against DuPuis. “The CLC will vigorously defend itself against any allegations to the contrary,” Stone told them.

Lottery officials did not comment Friday on specifics in the report. “We were just provided a copy … and will be discussing it” with the agency’s board of directors, said Tara Chozet, the lottery’s director of public relations and social media.

But Verrengia said Friday that the auditors’ report “clearly vindicates Mr. DuPuis and solidifies what many legislators on the [public safety] committee believed from the outset — that he was unfairly accused of being grossly negligent.”

Verrengia said the lottery corporation entrusted the proper conduct of the Jan. 16 do-over drawing to DuPuis, and it “can’t have it both ways” — that is, claiming he was negligent while still trusting him to “fix the problem” by overseeing the second drawing.

The auditors made a similar point in their report Friday, saying: “The fact that CLC relied upon Mr. DuPuis to conduct all of these post-January 1 … drawing activities undermines its claim of gross neglect.”

‘Potential’ For Fraud

DuPuis said in his CHRO complaint that “to provide a historical background as to my belief of retaliation, I told [a state auditor] that in January 2016, I had advised the [lottery’s] then President & CEO, Anne Noble, of my knowledge of the potential fraud” in the 5 Card Cash game. He said that he’d already advised Noble in April 2015 that the game “had a great potential for retailer fraud and suggested fraud mitigation actions to deter or prevent it” that Noble “declined to consider.”

He went on to say that this past Feb. 22, the lottery’s former board chairman/interim CEO, Frank Farricker, contacted him and “felt compelled to tell me ... [that] he was certain the ‘gross neglect’ charge against me was in retaliation for my uncovering the fraud scheme in the 5 Card Cash game” — as well as “the reporting of it to the Department of Consumer Protection … which resulted in the resignation of Anne Noble as the president & CEO.”

Noble stepped down as CEO in September 2016 amid the consumer protection agency’s investigation of 5 Card Cash, but didn’t attribute her decision to the probe. She entered a lucrative separation agreement that kept her on the lottery’s payroll until 2017 and enabled her to qualify for state retirement benefits.

Farricker filled in as interim CEO until May 2017, when he resigned after first attempting to become permanent CEO. He was replaced as interim CEO by Chelsea Turner, who had been hired originally by Noble as the lottery’s chief of strategy and government and operational affairs, and it was in that interim CEO’s role that Turner placed DuPuis on leave in February after the internal investigation.

DuPuis said in the complaint that both Noble and Turner, “who is Noble’s longtime protege, personal friend and coworker [in former Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s office],” had talked against him, according to Farricker.

‘Disparage And Defame’

“Mr. Farricker told me that Anne Noble came to him and the Board of Directors during the 5 Card Cash fraud investigation, on at least three occasions, asking to terminate my employment … as the director of security, citing ‘issues with Fred,’ ” DuPuis’ complaint said, adding: “I have every reason to believe that Chelsea Turner acted with willful and wanton action and disregard to publicly release an internal investigation [of the Jan. 1 drawing snafu], knowing that the facts were not accurate, to purposely disparage and defame my public reputation with the ‘gross neglect’ allegation so that she would have the ability to terminate me for such in retaliation for the demise of Anne Noble.”

The auditors said in Friday’s report that they had interviewed Farricker and that he had stated: “Within one hour of me taking over as interim president [two years ago], Chelsea Turner asked me to terminate Fred DuPuis. I thought this was ludicrous.”

Turner met with auditors on Oct. 31 and denied making that statement, the report said. “Regarding whether Ms. Turner ever asked Frank Farricker to authorize the termination of Mr. Dupuis’ employment, the answer is no,” the auditors quoted Stone, the general counsel, as saying.

The lottery’s board of directors chairman, Donald DeFronzo, also has said that since the governor appointed him to the lottery board in summer 2017, “not one person” — not Turner, not anyone — has “uttered a critical word” about DuPuis.

Noble, who is now in New York State, responded in August that “what happened at the Lottery last New Year’s has nothing to do with me and everything to do with Mr. DuPuis’ duties and team at the lottery.”

“This claim is a pathetic attempt at a defense to a credible concern that the public was not well served by the Lottery’s security team or DCP [the Department of Consumer Protection] this past New Year’s Day 2018,” she said.

Noble said that she’d asked repeatedly to testify in legislative public hearings on the lottery since 2017, but was denied. “Had I been permitted to testify … the falsehoods and innuendo repeated in DuPuis’ latest writings would already have been credibly debunked.”

In July, the lottery’s board of directors finally hired Gregory Smith, acting director of the Illinois Lottery, as its new CEO after nearly two years of turmoil, recriminations and investigations. Turner remains as his top deputy. Jon Lender is a reporter on The Courant’s investigative desk, with a focus on government and politics. Contact him at jlender@courant.com, 860-241-6524, or c/o The Hartford Courant, 285 Broad St., Hartford, CT 06115 and find him on Twitter@jonlender.