Thanks for posting the story Todd.  I never bought tickets from that store in the video but it's close to my house and I do business next door to it.  I always check my tickets myself first in the little machine in the stores for that purpose. I guess some ppl are in a hurry or don't realize the gizmo is there or they are just too trusting.

Now I'm wondering where in town all the other stores are that got busted.  They said over a dozen stores. Will check the CA Lotto website to see which stores.

Now to get my town on LP for a better story . . .like ... my big win!!!

The SCAM Alert icon is a great idea!

Its so nice to hear of store clerks scamming their customers who actually pay for services and goods at their store. Glad to see the Police are at large to get rid of the bad guys from those who are honest citizens. This 'capturing process' should be done all the time to keep these criminally minded people in their place and out of society.

Our 2 countries have absolutely everything and anything our hearts desire, from food, family, friends, work and much much more in the way of freedoms than most on this planet, and yet there are those who still will take advantage of THEIR situation against you. Not that anyone is unsuspecting, its plain old honesty and repect I'm talking about, and that seems to have vanished from society at large.

The rope continues to get tighter around the neck everytime these creeps make a play on the public and try to get away with it. The Police are our friends.

yt

dx123

nice Graphic Todd>>>can you make it flash on and off with some bright colors? Just asking.

No I don't think any lawyer would believe this is entrapment on the part of the undercover law enforcement officials...seemingly the only thing they did was present tickets to be checked that appeared to be actual winners.  It was the store clerks that decided to say they were non-winners and keep them and then the store clerks or the store management attempted to claim the winnings themselves.  I don't see the entrapment in that at all.  Whether the tickets were real or bogus shouldn't matter either...for example, the guys that got hemmed up by that Dateline sting on online sex predators definitely were charged with real crimes even though the premise was bogus (the people the "sex criminal" were writing to online and meeting were not underage teenage boys or girls, but adults working for Perverted Justice and an adult actress). 

It is unfortunate that the people who would be most likely to trust the clerks to check the tickets for them are the same people who may not have access to the lottery's website information via the internet, like homeless people or those who just simply don't have home PCs with internet access.  I only present a winning ticket to a clerk AFTER I already know that it is a winner and for how much.  That way, I know I can't get scammed.  If it is a small dollar winner, I may not always sign the back of it, but if it was a winner that would require me to go to the lottery office, then I wouldn't even take it back to a store to be validated...I would just head to the lottery office.  I hope these perpetrators get hammered because stealing is just wrong.  Heck even though I have bills, if I saw someone drop say a envelope and I happened to be walking behind them and picked it up and discovered that the envelope contained a several thousand dollars, I would call out to that person and catch up with them and hand the envelope right back to them.  And I wouldn't expect them to give me anything for doing the right thing in returning it to them, because that is just the right thing to do.

Oh, this is a great idea!  I wish they would do it here.  Simply brilliant.  I wouldn't have to put up with snide clerks or the ones who know absolutely nothing about the games.

Lock them up!

Lock them up!

Lock them up!

oh yeah one more thing.

Lock them up!

This happens alot at the laundryroom

it is not entrapment, entrapment would be if the police gives you drugs and then another police arrests you.

What happened in this article is truly illegal and bad. 

I am always keeping my losing tickets, but when the clerk says I won a dollar or two I do wonder, what if it really won $25 or more?

(By the way, I meant to vote all stars for this article, but I messed up and clicked the middle, I thought after clicking then I would be on the rating screen to vote, but instead it took the rating vote immediately.  Sorry, if I can change it let me know)

"I am always keeping my losingtickets, but when the clerk says I won a dollar or two I do wonder,what if it really won $25 or more?"

Check your tickets online before taking them to the store. It's easy to avoid being ripped off if you know how much you won before turning your tickets in.

definitely, thanks scarychick,  I will.

You're welcome. I just can't put my trust in the cashier. There have been too many stories of people handing their tickets to the cashier and them lying about the amount that they've won. It's just better to know what you won at the start, so you don't get ripped off. I'm not saying all cashiers are bad, because they're not, but you don't know who would be willing to rip you off.

"it is not entrapment, entrapment would be if the police gives you drugs and then another police arrests you."

It's very definitely not entrapment.  Entrapment is when law enforcement personnel or their agents persuade you to commit a crime when you had no intent to do so.  Simply giving you enough rope to hang yourself isn't entrapment. That's why cops can do a "buy and bust" or set up a bait car to catch car thieves.

According to the information presented in the article  the cops  in this case did exactly what  any other customer might have done. They handed over what appeared to be a winning ticket, and the clerks (alledgedly, of course) made the choice completely by themselves to lie about how much money the ticket was worth.

I'm glad these people got caught and hopefully will suffer consequences for their crimes.

However, it should also send a clear message to players to check their own tickets either online or by phone.  The Louisiana lottery has both options so I use one or the other to check my tickets.  Signing your tickets would also deter others from trying to steal your winnings.

ahahahahhaaaaa... BU$TED!

As the manager of a gas station that sells lottery tickets -- I would offer the following simple advice -- always ask for your tickets back. That way, if you think someone is trying to "scam" you, you can take it somewhere else to get it double checked.

Its policy where i work, that we hand back all non-winning tickets, and as far as im aware, we have never had issues with employee "theft" so to put it.

I recently bought a scratch-off in PA and thought I won $500. I went to two stores to have them check but because the people were either idiots or the machine to check the ticket was out of my eyesight, I took my ticket back and left.

I actually had to go to the PA lottery website to see if I had won because the directions were unclear. It said if there were two "$", then I won that amount. Well, I did have two $'s, but with an amount written between them (like "$40$"). On the website, I saw that it was supposed to be just the symbols and no amount with it. It was really confusing, and I've been playing for years. So I can understand why people get confused.

PA used to have on the scratch-offs the amount you actually won in the code, so you could just scratch off where the code was to see if you won without doing the whole ticket. However, I'm not sure they do that anymore. I now live in NC and they don't do it here. Too bad, it made it really easier to know if you had actually won.

I like how CA has the machines to check your tickets yourself. That would be awesome! I've never seen them here on the east coast.