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Victim of stolen Texas lottery ticket says he knows how to get money backNews Story
Willis Willis has an idea how he can get his money back from the store clerk who authorities say stole his $1 million winning lottery ticket. Just get me in a room with him for two minutes, says the 67-year-old Navy veteran. Willis was back home in Grand Prairie on Tuesday after a meeting with Texas Lottery Commission officials Monday in Austin in which his attorneys tried unsuccessfully to collect the winnings. It was a meeting that only seemed to add confusion and frustration to the
Nov 4, 2009, 8:20 am - Lottery News

Cheated winner wants Texas Lottery to pay upNews Story
A man cheated of his million-dollar jackpot wants the Texas Lottery to pay up. The case of Willis Willis drew widespread attention a week ago after a store clerk was indicted for allegedly keeping Willis' winning ticket and claiming the 67-year-old Grand Prairie man's prize in June. The clerk, identified as Pankaj Joshi, is considered a fugitive. And Willis is still waiting for his money. It's been amazing what's going on, Willis, who said he does maintenance work at apartment build
Oct 28, 2009, 8:46 am - Lottery News

Store clerk accused of stealing $1M lottery ticket from customerNews Story
Willis Willis may have had the winning lottery ticket, but it was the convenience store clerk who had his number. As authorities tell it, years of playing the Texas lottery finally paid off for the Grand Prairie man in May when he walked into the Lucky Food Store with a million-dollar ticket. But in a double twist of tortured fortune, an opportunistic clerk may have cheated him out of his ticket and his treasure. Now, while Willis waits to be a millionaire, police are searching for the
Oct 22, 2009, 5:58 am - Lottery News

Arkansas woman tries to cash in fake lottery ticket, arrestedNews Story
A woman is arrested inside the Arkansas Lottery Headquarters Monday afternoon, and the local media's cameras were there for the arrest. Police say Ruth Dennis, 56, tried to pass a fake winning ticket for the real thing at the claims center. Her friend, John Burch says he gave Dennis and her sister a ride from Camden with a $3,000 ticket. Lottery director Ernie Passailaigue says the ticket was clearly not real. He says she used the three times lucky scratch tickets and allegedly cut and pas
Oct 19, 2009, 7:56 pm - Lottery News

Convicted embezzler to forfeit Kansas Lottery prizeNews Story
Paul W. Lyle learned that he won the grand prize in a Kansas Lottery second-chance drawing at his preliminary hearing 11 days ago. Trouble was: The former radio executive was facing a charge of felony theft for embezzling a reported $87,750 from his employer, American Media Investments, which owns three radio stations in Pittsburg, five in Joplin, Mo., and five more in Texas. The supreme irony: Lyle, 63, the company's chief operating officer until the theft was discovered in May, confessed th
Oct 3, 2009, 11:36 am - Lottery News

Lottery winner picks up check, then gets arrestedNews Story
$4.4M lotto winner goes straight to jail It was a good news, bad news day for Barry Shell. The good news: he won more than $4 million. The bad news: he ended up in jail. Shell, from Brampton, Ontario, picked up a check for $4,377,298, the top prize in the July 18 draw for the Lotto 6/49. I went to the store and checked my ticket on the self-serve ticket checker, Shell was quoted as saying in a news release from the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation. As soon as I saw how muc
Jul 22, 2009, 8:57 pm - Lottery News

$25M lottery scam aimed at elderly bustedNews Story
The feds on Tuesday dismantled an Israeli boiler-room operation that conned elderly U.S. victims out of $25 million by telling them they'd won a sweepstakes lottery. A dozen members of the international telemarketing ring were named in a three-count fraud indictment handed up yesterday in Manhattan Federal Court. Prosecutors say ring members bought more than 185,000 names from U.S.-based brokers to find victims to dupe into turning over hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash to claim the
Jul 22, 2009, 6:51 pm - Lottery News

Lottery winners broke, bustedNews Story
For someone who struck it rich, William Rivenburgh had fairly modest plans about how to spend his lottery winnings three years ago: Pay off debts, make home repairs and possibly take a family trip to Disney World. Whether any of those things happened is unclear. What is clear is that the money Rivenburgh has gotten so far from the $1 million scratch-off ticket he won in 2006 seems to have evaporated. He doesn't have enough money to make $5,000 bail after he was arrested May 25 for alleged
Jun 25, 2009, 12:57 am - Lottery News

Joint task force created to stop Jamaica lottery scamsNews Story
The feds are cracking down on Jamaican lottery scams, which bilked Americans out of more than $30 million last year, authorities said Tuesday. The brazen con artists are transforming the tropical getaway into a fraudsters paradise pulling in untraceable cash to finance the drug and gun trades with impunity, officials said. It's just an incredible amount of money that's coming down here, said Vance Callender, an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement attache at the U.S. Embassy in Kingston.
May 27, 2009, 3:25 pm - Lottery News

New report criticizes Iowa Lottery securityNews Story
Report claims lottery not investigating fraud complaints The state ombudsman issued a report Tuesday alleging Iowa Lottery officials have failed to adequately protect the enterprise's customers from fraud and theft by retailers. Iowa Citizens' Aide/Ombudsman Bill Angrick said his review of three years' worth of lottery investigations found numerous customer complaints where leads went unexplored and potential crimes were not pursued. And, Angrick said in a 210-page report, even when the
Apr 22, 2009, 12:08 pm - Lottery News