If the New York lawyer who made the claim of a mysterious jackpot doesn’t provide key details by Friday, The Iowa Lottery will deny its payment.

Lottery CEO Terry Rich said at a news conference that Crawford Shaw has until 3 p.m. Friday to provide information for the agency to if the ticket was legally purchased and possessed. State lottery

He said he worried that Shaw’s attempt to hide the winner’s identity was “a classic example” of shielding a prohibited player.

Rich says the Lottery needs to know who had it from the time it was purchased at a Des Moines gas station in December 2010 until it was redeemed Dec. 29, minutes before the one-year deadline. Lotteries

Investigators met Monday to decide if they should launch a criminal investigation for the mysterious Iowa Lottery jackpot claim since records show the man signing the ticket has a history of questionable business dealings.

The checkered past of Crawford Shaw is complicating the lottery’s investigation into whether to pay the Hot Lotto jackpot worth $7.5 million cash or $10.3 million over 25 years.

To start with, rather than claiming the prize in person, Shaw shipped the ticket by FedEx to a law firm in Des Moines, he retained on Dec. 29, and its lawyers redeemed the ticket at Iowa Lottery headquarters hours before it was to expire. Shaw signed the ticket on behalf of Hexam Investments Trust. But, since, has refused to say how he ended up with the ticket or how long ago did he get it, who bought it at a Des Moines gas station last year, where or why nobody knew about it in the meantime, who would actually get the jackpot money, why was it giving to him and why does the person – or persons – of the trust doesn’t want his name to be made public.

Even Shaw did provide a copy of the trust agreement to lottery officials during a meeting last week, the Iowa Lottery spokeswoman, Mary Neubauer, says it doesn’t contain key information. For now, the agency says it won’t pay the jackpot until it is satisfied with information that the ticket was legally possessed and claimed.

For now, Lottery officials have planned a news conference Monday afternoon after meeting with representatives of the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation and the Iowa attorney general’s office to provide an update about the investigation.

Dave Button, who leads DCI’s gaming bureau, said his agency would ask whether a crime has been committed or was attempted and determine after the meeting whether to investigate further.

All these investigations would just be a precaution, they say, especially because Shaw has been linked to some unclear businesses in the past which have made it even more suspicious for The Iowa Lottery officials. Until many of those cases but, especially all the missing details about this ticket get resolved, this case is still considered as the most mysterious and complicated that Iowa Lottery has had to resolve in its whole existence.