Police still trying to find person who burglarized small store in June
By Kate Northrop
FORT LITTLETON, Pa. — State police are looking for the thief who stole over $27,000 worth of Pennsylvania Lottery tickets from a small gas station convenience store.
In June, an unidentified individual burglarized a rural retailer and took thousands of dollars' worth of Pennsylvania Lottery tickets.
On June 1 at around 6:00 a.m., State Police in McConnellsburg received a report of a theft that took place at 522 Pit Stop on Great Cove Road in Dublin Township, according to a press release published on Aug. 12. It's unknown whether one person or multiple people were involved in the burglary.
According to the Pennsylvania Lottery, scratch-off tickets "are distributed at random, meaning the Pennsylvania Lottery and its retailers do not know where winning tickets will be sold. The Lottery learns where winning tickets are sold only after a prize has been claimed."
The Lottery has the ability to remotely deactivate stolen scratch-off tickets. If a person in possession of a deactivated winning ticket tried to redeem the prize, the lottery retailer that scans the ticket is notified that the ticket and its prize are invalid.
"Retailers carefully control ticket inventories," Lottery spokesman Gary Miller told Casino.org. "When tickets are reported stolen, the lottery takes immediate steps to prevent them from being cashed. We also provide law enforcement with additional information to assist in their investigations."
When retailers receive scratch-off packs from the Lottery, they activate the tickets and prepare them for sale by scanning them into their management system. The Lottery can then compare inventory of present and missing scratch-off tickets to determine which ones are stolen.
"It's never a good idea to try to steal lottery tickets," Miller said. "You will get caught and you will be prosecuted."
Though it has been years since I purchased a scratch ticket, cashier would flip it over and scan the barcode on the back. Like I said a few weeks ago watched the Manager load the self service machine. She scanned one barcode to activate the whole package. Mistakenly before that thought the machine activated them @ purchase.
You are better off stealing the stale 2.69 bags of chips that used to sell for .25 or the stale 3.69 candy bars that used to sell for .29 than the lottery tickets when you go into a convenience store when it is closed.
POINTLESS. Cash a winner get arrested.
The staff member at the customer service desk at a grocery store scanned a barcode on a pack of tickets and told me the have to be activated before she can sell them. If they aren't activated, they are worthless.
In PA, you have to scan the pack twice. Once to confirm receipt of the pack and another to activate.
"Retailers carefully control Thier inventories" With these protocols in place they know where the big winnings tickets are. That's why winners typically all come from the same place
now we wait and see if the thief is dumb enough to try to cash them.
* It's quite possible that this thief or thieves attempted to cash a ticket or tickets at a place they frequent quite often when the teller informed them : " Dude, this ticket is from a stolen batch, my suggestion, burn them all, like right now, it's that or prison!"
* Have a good weekend people & win something, anything!
That is incorrect. Inventory means a unique barcode on a pack of tickets. What's underneath the scratch coating on any one of those tickets is a mystery, to be revealed by the ticket buyer.
"Thief steals $27,000 worth of Pennsylvania Lottery tickets from gas station"
Only won $2750, mostly free tickets.
The barcode on the back of the ticket is there just to tell the cash register what this is and how much it costs. The vending machine doesn't do that because it already knows what you're buying and how much it costs. The same is true for vending machines that sell anything else. When you buy a Coke from a vending machine, it doesn't scan the barcode.
I can't with 100% confidence say the state lottery doesn't know where the winning tickets are but retailers controlling their inventories is not that.
Each ticket has three sections.
XXXX-YYYYYYYYY-ZZZ.
X : Game number
Y : Batch number
Z : Ticket number which runs from 000 to 300 depending on the value of the ticket.
This is what they meant by controlling their inventories. They know exactly where a specific ticket is located cuz it's in the system when sent out and when it's activated at a retailer. But printing is done at a secure printing site run by the company Scientific Games at least in PA.
It's double blinded in the sense, Scientific Games knows which batch has winning tickets but they're not in charge of where the tickets go. PA lottery is in charge of where the tickets go but they're not told which batch contains the winning ticket. Retailers are the only ones in the chain with zero information.
"It's double blinded in the sense, Scientific Games knows which batch has winning tickets but they're not in charge of where the tickets go. PA lottery is in charge of where the tickets go but they're not told which batch contains the winning ticket. "
That's the basics of it, as I understand it. Quite a while back somebody from the security department of a lottery (Indiana, I think) was able to determine where a big winner had been sent and (again, IIRC) sent someone else there to buy all of that game's tickets. If the security is any good the process is triple or quadruple blind, but there's a paper trail. If necessary, that trail can be accessed after the fact as part of the security and validation process. The trail should only be accessible after a ticket has been presented to claim a prize but lottery security isn't always as good as it should be. Hopefully the Indiana(?) incident resulted in all lotteries reviewing their procedures and tightening things up if necessary.
Thank You KY Floyd for clarifying my posting.Its pretty much what I suspected. That part about not knowing where the tickets go, I think they need to mix up the distribution a little better, because if they keep doing it the same way- guess what the jackpot winners continually wind up in the same area