THE heated battle over Edwin Castro’s $2billion Powerball win has striking similarities to other California Lottery controversies, an investigator has said.

As Castro endures a bitter court battle to prove he is the rightful winner of the largest sum ever claimed, Las Vegas-based investigator Reid Galbreath is transported all the way back to 2015.

Back then, he was working for the California Lottery Commission, charged with uncovering questionable winners and dubious pay-outs.

It may seem like a foolproof system – you buy a ticket and if the numbers come in, the cash is handed over.

Nothing, however, could be further from the truth.

Just ask Jose Rivera, the man who said he owned the golden ticket that was cashed in by Castro earlier this year for an eye-watering $996million.

Galbreath, acutely aware of the importance of the money being fairly distributed within the education system as it’s supposed to, quickly found out the number of people either cheating the system, or other players, was mind-blowing.

Just six months into the job, he found dozens of cases where dodgy gas station owners pretended winning tickets were losers and then pocketed the money for themselves.

He used decoy tickets in some places, allowing his team of investigators to follow the paper trail and uncover any wrongdoing.

A common theme was a retailer stealing the fake ticket, and then asking a family member, in one example a man’s mom, to claim the winnings.

“The Lottery did a really good job of promoting itself as being a very ethical organization that wanted to prevent public money from being paid out erroneously and wanted to protect the players,” Galbreath, whose book What Are the Odds – blowing the whistle on California’s Lottery shone a light on multiple instances of alleged wrongdoing, told The U.S. Sun.

That, according to Galbreath couldn’t have been further from the truth.

Two incidents with wildly different conclusions, however, started the alarm bells ringing – and had striking similarities with the Castro case which is continuing to rumble on in the courts.

It also resulted in his firing by the commission for what he says was simply doing his job.

In March 2015, Hung Nguyen, a mechanic with a young family from Los Angeles, claimed he had won a $1million jackpot.

There was, however, a problem. He had lost his ticket.

The California Lottery Commission urged the winner to come forward and released surveillance footage from the store where it was bought.

The man in the videos resembled Nguyen – but he’d forgotten about the ticket and threw it in the trash.

It was only when his boss alerted him to the resemblance a few weeks later did he finally attempt to claim his winnings.

Unfortunately for Nguyen, he was promptly to forget about claiming the prize without a ticket.

The money went into the public school system, yet just months later lotto officials were dealing with a very similar situation – and amazingly bent the rules.

In another case, a Beverly Hills-based poker player and businessman claimed he had landed a $2million lotto jackpot in June 2015.

Just like Nguyen, the gambler didn’t have the winning ticket.

An investigation showed a winning ticket had been purchased in Los Angeles in January 2015 and the winnings hadn’t been claimed.

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Lotto officials reached out to the gas station in question and, between them, identified a regular customer as the winner.

There was, however, a massive issue. The man didn’t have a ticket.

Furthermore, the CCTV footage was inconclusive – a real fear in the current Castro case.

The timing was off and other people bought tickets around the same time.

Red flags over the poker player’s supposed win were evident and when Galbreath’s colleague, Susan Brean, interviewed him, it was revealed he paid $6 for his ticket, despite California Lottery records showing the winning ticket actually cost $20.

“If the information he gave was accurate, there was no way he could be the winner,” Brean said at the time.

She insisted the businessman shouldn’t receive the $2million windfall – but the commission bizarrely thought otherwise.

Brean was suspended soon after and was fired in June 2016. Galbreath’s dismissal followed a few months later.

So while unfortunate blue-collar worker Nguyen was denied what would have been a life-changing fortune for his family, a Poker player with multiple businesses from plush Beverly Hills was allowed to pocket the cash.

The poker player did not immediately respond to The U.S. Sun’s request for comment.

“I was so angry about it, I had to write a book,” Galbreath said. “I think about these two cases every day.”

“This incident is what led to my partner and I deciding to actually investigate the lottery and potential fraudulent claims,” he said.

He helped put together a multi-page complaint that was sent to the California State Auditor that “outlined the millions of dollars that the lottery had erroneously paid out that should have gone to public schools.”

Another case involves a man who gave a “completely fraudulent” statement to Lotto officials yet was still given the green light to collect $750,000, despite the evidence screaming otherwise.

“It’s the closest I’ve come in my life to having panic attacks,” said an exasperated Galbreath.

“I started to lose all faith in the organization that I was working for.

“The lottery didn’t actually care about ensuring the right people were paid,” he said.

“They were actually more concerned about their image and just pushing winners out in front of the press so that everybody could continue to have lottery fever and buy more tickets.”

Now, with Castro’s case attracting global attention, Galbreath has been moved to act once again.

He has been in touch with Rivera’s legal team to act as a consultant and expert in a case that he says has striking similarities to the poker player situation.

“I think that what Jose Rivera is alleging is totally and completely plausible,” he said.

“It’s very similar to those past cases and I think that there are definitely holes in the way that the lottery does their investigations.”

“There’s a lot of inconsistency in how they’ve operated over the last 15 years,” he added. “And no one has ever called them out on that.”

The investigations expert wants federal regulators to work with the lottery to ensure there are no more problems moving forward – but he’s not holding his breath.

“The lottery should have to publicly prove that they absolutely paid the right person, and they should have to show the evidence that they used to ensure that that money was paid out correctly,” concluded Galbreath.

“The California Lottery have a history of either being hypocritical or changing their practices based on whatever is best for them at the time.”