Store owner guilty of stealing lottery ticket, claiming it as his ownPrevious TopicNext Topic

The article here is a pretty lousy one. There's an article that explains a bit more of the story here:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hvlGsTtG6NFOC07S9oS1ZBs3Iw0AD9CCOM0G0

It clears up most of what was asked here, but doesn't say anything about why the investigator didn't figure it out  quickly. Two of the members knew the jackpot had been claimed, so you'd think the first order of business would have been to go to the lottery and find out who claimed the prize.  The article says they hired the investigator to "look into one of the group members" so maybe they just got fixated on the idea that they'd been ripped off by one of their own.

Yes you can check your own tickets that are the on line tickets. But the scratch off tickets they rip you off. I had a ticket and and it had a bonus on it, I knew I won so much plus it said $20.00 bonus. I took it to the retailer on the corner, who always had his kid and some of his friends in there running the business. I gave him my scratch off and he gave me my money minus the bonus. I argued that I get $20.00 for bonus. He said he didn't know how the tickets were read and he scanned the ticket already so he couldn't give me the ticket back and his cousin wasn't around. The bonus wasn't part of the scanned win amount it was a extra win amount.  So I got screwed out of the 20.00  bucks.  So I will bet he pocketed the $20.00 when his cousin came back and asked about the ticket.  So on scratch offs how do you protect your self from ignorant people that don't understand how to read a ticket to cash it in? Sorry this is so long.

Lotto Lin

Thanks for the props.  I actually avoided the article you posted the link for because it was not as good.

It was absolutely the right thing for the lotter commission to give them interest.  The cashiers are agents of the lottery commission. 

As for why the lady would trust the cashier.  Some people just aren't smart.

I don't understand some people, there are just way too many  (free) sources to find the actual numbers or game rules for scratcher.  On the odd occasion when I do play a scratchers, I only play th tickets where I can figure out the winnings.  California has some odd solitaire, poker and bingo tickets that are quite difficult to under so even though they have the (rare )decent odds, I avoid them because I'd have to rely on the clerk to explain wny winners.  I noticed that not all the machines say  HOW MUCH your ticket won, just that its a winner.  I always check my own tickets.  And on the few occasions that I was wrong  the clerk gave me MORE than expected cause I missed something.  Not all clerks are crooks, but like someone said earlier, money does strange things to people, Ya never know.