The attorney who represents a trust attempting to claim a multimillion-dollar Hot Lotto jackpot, in the most mysterious jackpot winner in the history of the Iowa Lottery, faces legal troubles in Delaware, court documents show. State lottery

Crawford Shaw, the attorney who is trying to claim a jackpot worth much as $14.2 million on behalf of his client, Hexam Investments Trust, is being sued over his involvement in a now-bankrupt company called Industrial Enterprises of America Inc.

Shaw first came to Iowans’ attention on Dec. 29 as his signature was the one on the back of the Hot Lotto ticket that had been held for nearly a year. Lotteries

Less than two hours before it was to expire, two attorneys from the Davis Brown firm in Des Moines delivered the ticket to lottery officials.

According to Iowa Lottery spokesman Mary Neubauer, Shaw declined to tell the Register who is behind Hexam or whether the trust consists of one person or more even more people. “He didn’t reveal the information to lottery officials either.”

Shaw said he and the lottery “have agreed to keep everything confidential until it is all worked out. We’re making progress.” Shaw has even met with Iowa Lottery officials, this was last Tuesday, and for about 90 minutes, but no resolution was reached on the prize.

The Iowa Lottery has not awarded the jackpot and continues to investigate whether the ticket was legally obtained and possessed, Neubauer said.

The ticket was purchased Dec. 23, 2010, at a QuikTrip in northeast Des Moines.

The Iowa Lottery is one of 15 state lotteries that pool resources to offer jackpots starting at $1 million in Hot Lotto, a numbers game similar to Powerball. Since the ticket was purchased in Iowa, the responsibility of investigating the claim and awarding the prize falls to Iowa Lottery officials.

The ticket played two sets of numbers over the next five drawings. The winning numbers hit on the second drawing, Dec. 29, 2010. The ticket was worth $16.5 million at the time.

The ticket was sent by Shaw by Federal Express to the Davis Brown firm, and there their lawyers drove the ticket to Iowa Lottery headquarters on Grand Avenue in Des Moines 1 hour and 10 minutes before the ticket was to expire.

Since then, lottery officials investigations haven’t stopped as to how the ticket made it from a Des Moines convenience store into the hands of a 76-year-old lawyer living in Bedford, N.Y.

All and all, lottery officials still claim, as they have always done, that they will not award the prize until the person or persons behind the trust are revealed since the Iowa law requires a winner to give his name and address when claiming a prize. And even when the winner does not have to make a public appearance or a public statement, most of them have done so.

In this case, the questions remain and Lottery security personnel are still curious about why the jackpot went unclaimed for so long, Neubauer said.

This Lottery mystery seems to be far from getting resolved.