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Texas lottery winner battled Alzheimer's as daughter stole $250,000News Story
Not long after Austin widow Billie Lawler matched all five numbers in the Mega Millions in 2005, her health began to erode along with her $750,000 prize. She hoped to live out the balance of her life at a high-end Alzheimer's care facility, but was evicted after about a year when she no longer could make the $5,000 monthly rent, prompting a court-ordered investigation that revealed her daughter had burned through her mom's money a crime against the elderly that prosecutors and judges say is c
Jun 3, 2018, 4:28 pm - Lottery News

SC lottery error prompts class-action lawsuitNews Story
It was Christmas Day in South Carolina and plenty of people were feeling lucky. For just $1, they could buy a ticket for Holiday Cash Add-A-Play at their local convenience store. The ticket looked a bit like a tic-tac-toe game: get three Christmas trees in a row on a nine-space grid and you won, maybe 2 or 20 bucks. Get all nine Christmas trees to fill the grid entirely and you won the $500 jackpot. The odds of that happening were 1 in 4,800. But something amazing started happening at exactly
Jun 2, 2018, 9:10 am - Lottery News

Connecticut woman stole more than $25K in lottery ticketsNews Story
Police in a small Connecticut town said a former gas station worker in stole more than $25,000 in scratch-off lottery ticket revenue from the business. Juliana Perillo, 55,was charged with first-degree larceny Monday in connection to lottery revenue that went missing from Petro Pat's in Wolcott. She was released on a promise to appear and is next scheduled to appear in court on July 2. Police said Perillo faked numbers on a store log sheet to make it seem like customers had returned their
May 23, 2018, 11:09 am - Lottery News

NY lottery winner plans to sue Gaming Commission to keep his $5M winnings a secretNews Story
An unemployed father from Norwood, New York, won $5 million from a lottery scratch off ticket he bought April 24 and he wants to keep the details of his windfall quiet. But the New York State Lottery requires winners of $1 million and more to participate in a press conference where they receive a giant ceremonial check for their winnings. That obligation is written on the back of each ducat. Now, the Bronx man plans to sue the state's Gaming Commission, arguing he should be allowed to rema
May 17, 2018, 6:07 pm - Lottery News

OOPS: Phone fraudster tries to scam copNews Story
Includes video report A phone scammer made a grave error when he dialed Officer Jeff Bowling and attempted to access his personal information last week. At first, the caller had no clue he was on the line with a cop. Officer Bowling with the Peebles Police Department in Adams County, Ohio, was actually working on the case when he got a call from a strange number that turned out to be a phone scammer. He quickly began to record the conversation, which lasted for 11 minutes. A man on the
May 16, 2018, 2:54 pm - Lottery News

U.S. Supreme Court overturns federal sports-wagering banNews Story
The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal law that bars gambling on individual sporting events in most of the country, in a ruling likely to unleash a race among the states to attract billions of dollars in legal wagers. Ruling in a New Jersey case, the court said the 1992 law unconstitutionally forced states to maintain laws that ban gambling. Nevada is the only state where single-game wagering is now legal. Sports gambling could begin in a matter of weeks in casinos and racetracks i
May 14, 2018, 11:03 am - Lottery News

Massachusetts Lottery winners increasingly opting to stay anonymousNews Story
Some people can't believe David Spillane's luck when it comes to the state lottery. People come up to me and say congratulations. How come you win over and over? Spillane, a lawyer from Hanover, said in a recent interview. Five times since Jan. 1, Spillane has gone to Massachusetts State Lottery headquarters in Braintree to claim a winning ticket. The total windfall to date is $6 million. Each time, the state Lottery has distributed to the press and posted on its website the standard g
May 14, 2018, 8:20 am - Lottery News

NY credit union chief accused of embezzling money from fund, spending $3.55M on lottery ticketsNews Story
The head of the city's oldest credit union embezzled money from the fund for years splurging on millions worth of lottery tickets by submitting bogus invoices for dental work and other expenses, federal prosecutors said Tuesday. Kam Wong, 62, from Valley Stream, L.I., who heads the Municipal Credit Union, allegedly used the ill-gotten gains to purchase some $3.55 million in New York State lottery tickets, according to Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman. He also obtained numerous other
May 8, 2018, 9:06 pm - Lottery News

The man who cracked the lotteryNews Story
Crime story: A recounting of the biggest lottery scandal in history The file landed on Rob Sand's desk with something less than a thud. Despite holding the contents of an investigation still open after more than two years, the file was barely half an inch thick. Happy birthday, his boss said. It was not Rob Sand's birthday. His boss, an Iowa deputy attorney general named Thomas H. Miller, was retiring in July 2014 after nearly three decades of prosecuting everything from murder to fraud. H
May 3, 2018, 2:49 pm - Lottery News

N.J. man charged in $10K lottery scam on 84-year-old womanNews Story
A New Jersey man tricked an 84-year-old woman into handing over more than $10,000 after telling her she won a lottery, but needed to pay the taxes on the winnings in advance, authorities said. Earl Alton Smith, 40, convinced the Canandaigua, New York, resident to give him a $5,000 check and one totaling $5,500 in October, New York State Police said in a statement. Smith was arrested by Port Authority police on Wednesday at Newark Liberty International Airport as he was about to board a pl
May 1, 2018, 9:23 am - Lottery News