Investigations will expand after lottery ticket agents attempt to redeem undercover agents' winning tickets
Five Twin Cities convenience store employees and three accomplices are facing lottery fraud charges after they were caught by undercover investigators allegedly trying to cash in winning lottery tickets for themselves.
The fraud was discovered after the Minnesota State Lottery's security office and the state's Alcohol & Gambling Enforcement Division set up a sting operation to test whether employees at lottery retailers were lying to players about the value of their tickets and then trying to redeem the winnings.
"(We) really need our retailers to be honest and to have their employees do it right every time," said state lottery director Clint Harris.
The stings took place last December and January at 186 randomly selected metro stores, Harris said. Undercover agents would ask clerks to verify the specially constructed crossword game scratch-offs as winners. The prizes ranged from $7,000 to $21,000.
"Our goal was to find out how people would handle those tickets, and what instructions they would give," said John Willems, director of alcohol and gambling enforcement for the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, which had agents help with the sting.
Harris said he wasn't pleased with the stores that failed, but he was proud that the majority of the tested employees didn't give into temptation. Out of 186 stores in the metro area that were visited by an undercover agent during the sting, five stores didn't pass.
"I was hoping for zero of course," Harris said. "Unfortunately, there are some of our retailers that do not do the right thing."
Harris noted that although 3 percent of the stores visited commited fraud, a similar test in California found 18 percent of 450 stores checked broke the law.
During the sting, undercover agents would bring in a decoy lottery ticket that appeared to be a winner for a large amount of money. The agent would ask the clerk to verify if it was a winner to see if the clerk would tell the agent to bring the ticket into the state lottery office in Roseville. Winning tickets valued at more than $599 must be brought to the state lottery office to be redeemed.
The Ramsey County attorney's office charged eight people with felony lottery fraud after the investigation. Each charge carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison, a $25,000 fine or both.
Representatives of the five stores either refused to comment or could not be reached by phone Friday. The eight suspects charged with felonies by the Ramsey County attorney's office also could not be reached.
Stores that failed the compliance test could face administrative action by the state lottery, including having their lottery ticket sales suspended or their contracts canceled.
Lottery officials also plan to make more Minnesota retailers aware of the tests.
While buying lottery tickets at a downtown St. Paul convenience store Friday, Gregg Draper, of St. Paul, said he wasn't surprised by the news. If he had a winning ticket for several hundred dollars, he wouldn't bother going to a store, but directly to Lottery headquarters.
"There's some shady people," he said.
Minnesota's compliance check was part of an effort to uphold the state lottery's commitment to ensure players receive the correct prizes, to ensure retailers are meeting expectations when selling lottery tickets and to protect the games, Harris said.
"From our standpoint, it is an effective program," Willems said. "The overwhelming majority of people out there did the right thing. It is our intention to continue."
Harris said the compliance checks are just one tool that will help players get correct winnings. He encouraged players to sign the backs of their tickets right away so they can't be redeemed by anyone else. Ticket scanners are also in 1,600 of the state's 3,100 lottery retailers, so players can look for the machines instead of bringing tickets to the clerk.
Authorities are planning to continue the checks and expand them to outstate Minnesota soon.
"We're in the business of handing out prize money, and we want people to get the right amount," Harris said. "The integrity of our games have to be top notch, otherwise we would fail."
The Accused
Store clerks and accomplices charged with fraud after a Minnesota State Lottery compliance check:
- Asgaralli Ali, 47, of Minneapolis, and Jairam Shiwmangal, 45, of Minneapolis, at Sunset Market, 10130 Sunset Ave. in Circle Pines
- Jaideep Singh, 19, of Columbia Heights, and Harpreet Kaur Virk, 22, of San Francisco, at Easy Way Foods, 2820 Johnson St. N.E. in Minneapolis
- Nancy Ahmed Youssef, 31, and Mohamed S. Ahmed, 37, both of Coon Rapids, at University Market, 308 37th Ave. N.E. in Columbia Heights
- Susan Lynn Hanna, 48, of Vadnais Heights, at River Country Cooperative, 1180 N. Concord St. in South St. Paul
- Majdi Elias Almadien, 38, of Apple Valley, at SS BP, 4553 Nicollet Ave. S. in Minneapolis
Tips to prevent your lottery prize from being stolen
- Sign the back of a winning ticket before trying to cash it.
- Use an electronic ticket checker, if available at the store, to verify the ticket and winnings.
- If you hand over your ticket to be checked, always insist on getting it back afterward. Don't let the agent throw it away. The agent does not have a right to keep it, and there is no rule or law stating that you must give up the losing ticket. It belongs to you.
- Listen for any audio tones produced by the lottery machine when the ticket is checked. Most machines will make a "error tone" if the ticket is a loser, but if the ticket is a winner it will generate a receipt and sometimes produce a "winning sound" of some type. If the lottery machine produces a receipt after the clerk scans the ticket, it is probably a winner. Insist on seeing the receipt it produced. If the agent won't show you, they are almost certainly concealing a winning notification.
It's hard out here for everyone. Some have had to trim the FAT, alittle
more than others, some people get desperate, make wrong choses
Its not worth goin to JAIL
Not to be racist or lump everyone together stereotypically, but look at the names of the accused. After they get through the legal system, maybe the Immigration system should check them out.
Yea I noticed that too.
One can imagine that this article (the subject matter) is a hot topic of conversation among lottery directors. Hopefully every state lottery has done this, or is planning to do this — undercover ticket redemption.
I hope that while they are going through this process that they also note which retailers refuse to pay out the prize. There is nothing more aggravating than taking a winning ticket to a retailer only to be told "we can't cash that ticket."
If a store wants to be a lottery retailer, they should be required to cash all winning tickets less than $600, no ifs, ands, or buts.
I noticed the names, too. It just seems to be the trend that these are people who come into our neighborhoods and set up stores though for the life of me, I can't figure out how they do it. They come to our counry and the next day or so, they have a store.
Most of the time they do it by working in someone else's store for a few years to save up money for their own store. People within the Indian community help each other out in this way -- they leapfrog off of each other. They also hire within their own ethnic community. Very closed-loop. So if someone is starting a store, they will look for (and hire) others within their community who eventually want their own store. They know their employee will work all the time, 6-7 days per week, many hours per day, and they probably pay all their overtime under the table.
I hope that while they are going through this process that they also note which retailers refuse to pay out the prize. There is nothing more aggravating than taking a winning ticket to a retailer only to be told "we can't cash that ticket."
If a store wants to be a lottery retailer, they should be required to cash all winning tickets less than $600, no ifs, ands, or buts.
This is outrageous. Its hard enough to get people to pony up their hard earned dollars and even play the lotto these days, nevermind the difficulty in actually beating the odds and getting a payout. Now we have 2nd guess the retailers that they might be scamming us out of the $$$? I like these undercover busts- maybe it will deter a would be lotto cheat for fear of getting busted.
I'm gonna ignore the "names and ethnicity" issue and just state my disgust for the thieving lottery clerks. I hope they be banned from ever working at places that sells lottery. If everybody just told the truth and led honest lives there would be world peace!
Thief of "high-stakes" begins making license plates.
"...Use an electronic ticket checker, if available at the store, to verify the ticket and winnings..."
These should be mandatory at all stores that sell lottery tickets. Players can check their own tickets, which allows store employees to concentrate on store work.
Players don't have to bother store clerks with checking losing tickets. And if you have a winning ticket, you will know it is a winner and how much it is worth before you hand it to the clerk.
Players should not have to surrender their tickets and depend on an unknown sales clerk to tell them the truth about the status of a ticket.
Players should be able to check their own tickets.
Sign your ticket before having a clerk check it.A clerk would have to be as dumb as a post to try cashing an already signed ticket.
I agree with that - which is why I made that point #1 of "things to do to avoid a stolen prize" at the bottom of the article. But, the problem is that most people handing their ticket over are doing it in order to determine if it's a winner (they don't know it's a winner yet), and most people would not dream of signing every lottery ticket they get checked.
(I know, some people do that, but most people don't/won't.)
So that's what makes the rest of the points in the article so important. Vigilance is the most important thing. Don't let the lottery agent bully you into letting them keep the "losing" ticket! Don't let them "throw it away". There is no law or rule saying they have to keep a ticket after checking it -- the ticket belongs to you!
In Baltimore and most other big city's most immigrants belong to a coalition the coalition works very hard to keep their coalition intact you come here get a job and a place to live provided by the coalition you pay the coalition x amount of dollars and donate some of it to the center so they can bring another family member here. It becomes a never ending circle as you live and work in the community your debt gets paid and you are free to pursue the pursuit of happiness.
The more money you bring with you when entering the USA the more status you can hold some immigrants already have a business plan and the necessary paper work, money and degrees to accomplish their goals.
If more Americans pooled their resources they could have a piece of the American dream also but for some reason the feel they must do it alone without help from anyone other than their immediate family. Sad.
The names certainly suggest something about ethnicity and ancestry, so noticing it doesn't necessarily suggest that you're a racist. OTOH, that you don't know that ethnicity or ancestry doesn't tell you anything about their nationality or citizenship does suggest that you're an idiot.
That's fine for tickets that can't be cashed at a store, but doesn't mean much if a clerk wants to give you $50 and then take the rest for a ticket that's worth a few hundred bucks. I expect that thenlottery deliberately uses tickets with big prizes so that the dishonest clerks can be charged with a felony, but if they don't also use smaller tickets means that somebody with a smaller ticket isn't part of a sting operation.
I'd like to see how the Iowa stores would have done with prizes like these
www.lotterypost.com/news/190538
$1 - $100 prizes aren't nearly as tempting as multi-thousand dollar ones might be.
your right ......in my neighborhood store there from - Palistine - and all the clerks have to do is cheat like hell ...but be right only once ?
they have them in New York they dont always work and go back only 30 days and must be free fromm the sun ...otherwise its too much glare to read the bar code on the ticket ;
and never are the checkers in a covient spot for the lottery player they always seem to interfeer with lottery players ; I wonder if the machines are leased ???? IF SO THEN HOW MUCH THE CONTRACTOR GETS ;
THANK YOU!! Todd - What can WE do to make the retailers pay? I can only cash in my tickets at one in a neighborhood of about 10 retailers. I am told that they can only pay me by money order by one retailer, the others just refuse to pay me. Once I had to go out of town to cash my ticket and I live in Philadelphia, Pa!
I just think that if I pay you cash to play my ticket, I should be paid in cash when I win, up to the limit of course. I can see if I had 5 - 500.00 tickets and you don't have that much on hand, but give me something!
And the retailers have no respect for your lotto tickets, they rather do anything else than to input your numbers in correctly.
The most important thing you can do is to complain to the state lottery (in writing) every time something like that happens. Each new infraction = 1 new, separate complaint.
Lottery retailers have to get approved to sell the lottery, and they go through training and certification. There are a set of rules that retailers must abide by. If a retailer is consistently breaking the lottery's guidelines, then I'm sure the lottery will threaten them.
Ultimately, the lottery has the power to suspend or revoke the retailer's license to see tickets, so enough complaining may do the trick.
You really have to be diligent about it though. Most people just forget about it when they finally track down a retailer that helps them out, so retailers get away with all kinds of stuff as a result.
I agree with your last sentence too. I have seen many retailers that get a real attitude when they have to type in numbers, and they act like it's YOUR fault when they screw it up. The heavy breathing and sighing ensues.
And, oh my gosh, wait'll you ask them to enter a different kind of wager! I like to wheel my bets, and some of them look at me cross-eyed when I ask them for a wheeled bet. Usually only one person in the whole store knows how to do it, and they're somewhere in the back.
I will say, however, that I have also come across many very nice, knowledgable lottery retailers too. (Those are the ones I tend to go to again and again.)
The best lottery retailers are the ones who are thrilled to have a lottery machine in their store, and they understand the value that selling the lottery brings to their store.
I think people who are too stupid to know that their tickets are winners should not be playing them. I don't see how anyone gets taken like this. I always keep losing tickets and no cashier ever tried to keep them.
NO NO NO NO NO MY FRIEND, YOU ARE GOING ABOUT THIS THE WRONG WAY. ANYONE - AND I MEAN ANYONE, SHOULD AND MUST BE ABLE TO PLAY WITHOUT BEING CHEATED.
THIS IS OUTRIGHT WRONG THAT PEOPLE ARE BEAING CHEATED OUT OF MONEY. BC THIS IS WHAT THIS IS.
WINNINGS ARE MONEY, AND CUSTOMERS WHO WIN ARE CUSTOMERS. SO.... THIS IS CRAZY. AND I'LL TELL YOU WHAT, it makes me crazy as hell when customers get cheated out of money.
I DON'T CARE if you're a millionaire or on welfare, what yours is yours.
Let me tell you, recently I had a very bad experience with this one retailer, and I never went back of course, but The guy must have been f---ING nuts to try to think to cheat ME out of MY WINNINGS.
The machine said "your're a winner", and I already knew that of course, and for how much too, ($80.) He was an immigrant too, but that is meaningless, bc there are dishonest people all over, its just that My opinion on this is that they maybe come from dog-eat-dog countries, and i dunno Americans try to be fair and honest, not to imply everyone is, but what i'm saying is, that's the general attitude is ... in America ... fair is fair... as it should be. 
- - - - - -
Anyway, guy pissed me off, had to hassle him, more on the principle, bc I always put myself in the shoes of someone who wouldn't know any better, and it irritated the hell out of me, that even after the "YOU'RE WINNER SOUND" he had the audacity to say in butchered English, with greedy eyes
, "not winner, You come back, Tank you For Playing." this is irritated me so much, I can't tell you what I wanted to do to him then and there, but then again, if you've ever tried to have been swindled out of something that's yours, that you paid for, I'm sure you know what I felt, or was feeling, and what I thought about doing to him. Anyway, I kept my ground, and he finally payed me, FEIGNING ONLY AFTERWARDS that he didn't know what had just happened, which is complete bs, bc TRUST ME, YOU KNOW WHEN ITS AN HONEST MISTAKE, AND WHEN ITS A BLATANT RIP-OFF IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE. THAT'S WHAT REALLY UPSET ME. anyway, I was polite, and insisted, HE NEVER gave me my ticket back, refused to, but since he payed me the right amount i shrugged it off. Had he not, I would have called the police, I don't care how non-urgent it was, bc what he did is breaking the law. And you can't do that to people. needless to say I never went back there again, and sent an angry e-mail to Lottery Headquarters in Oklahoma, and they said they would look into the matter. Whatever that means, but anyway, going back to what Todd said, signing the ticket is important, VERY IMPORTANT ACTUALLY. but lets be real here folks. We don't walk around with a pen all the time, and even then, its hard to find a surface to sign the ticket, or tickets. but then again,its all the responsibility of the player, yes, BUT, this gives retailers and clerks no excuse for trying to make their money through others, you're NOT THE GOVERNMENT lol lol lol lol . lol, at least the government builds roads.... you clerks are just greedy and this needs to stop. 
[otherwise this might happen . lol jk ]
And you know, if its a young clerk they are usually not that cunning, or care, but i overlook this, its usually the older people that give you grief and and pant and groan, WELL GUESS WHAT. IT'S YOUR JOB. YOUR GETTING PAID FOR IT. AND MAY I SAY SOME STORES HAVE DESIGNATED LOTTERY CLERKS, AND EVEN THEN THEY PISS AND MOAN. EXCUSE MY FRENCH.
AND THEY HAVE NO RIGH TO THIS. AND, on a further note, I always hate it when they ask why I buy or play so much, like its their G-d-Damn business,
, one thing is to say "hey you play alot" - you give a friendly grin - ANOTHER IS, when they F-ing start interrogating you up the hill with so many G-d-damn questions, you think you did something wrong .... hahahahaha 
ANYWAY HAD TO VENT, bc i am a very straightforward person, and I call it like i see it. And from now on, i will write like Todd said, an e-mail to LOTTERY HQ, for every wrong i see, or encounter... BC GUESS WHAT FOLKS, that's what they are there for. To make your playing experience as best as possible, and that's what we should all demand. That's why their directors get paid the BIG-BUCKS, AND i'm tired of seeing the bad guys win. And the good guys can't do anything about it, unless we report them. So...
yeah in all, just beware people, bc nothing beats stupid, but like i said on the top, everyone deserves fair.
AND REMEMBER KEEP YOUR COOL. dON'T START A FIGHT, BC ULTIMATELY, YOU'RE PROBABLY JUST A $15 DOLLAR WINNER. HAHAHAHAHA
, BUT EVEN SO, YOU HAVE RIGHTS. EXERCISE THEM. 
I am not going about nothing the wrong way, "friend." I have never been taken. If you are going to play lottery games you better at least educate yourself about how they work. I did. I personally never had a problem with this, but I was also well prepared when I cashed my tickets in. If you are going to spend hard earned money on lottery tickets you should know what you are doing.
Not just be lazy about it and have them scanned. No one "should" be cheating you, but you can't trust anyone and you have to do whatever you can to protect yourself. Not rely on others to be honest. It doesn't matter what is right or wrong, what matters is being well prepared for both.
Nab them all......
"...'Use an electronic ticket checker, if available at the store, to verify the ticket and winnings'...
These should be mandatory at all stores that sell lottery tickets"
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"they have them in New York they dont always work and go back only 30 days"
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I used the Mega Millions electronic ticket checkers in the Chicago area for years. Granted they were not perfect, but they were much better than handing over your tickets to a stranger and depending on him to tell you the truth.
Now that I'm in Powerball territory, I hate that they do not have electronic ticket checkers here.
Make sure that the display is facing you. Seen some Stores that have it turned around toward the Agent's view. also watch for sleight-of-hand where they may hoard a few losers or small winners ready to quicky "swap in" under the scanner. Also, don't Rush; if they look close to a win, double check. I find discarded ones that turn out winners because one symbol was missed.
"Powerball Territory" may soon be "everywhere".
I was wondering about the rule if you can keep your winning ticket or not? Since,I think if a winning ticket get scanned then it would disable something on or in the ticket.
1.Am I wrong?
2.I got my winnings before from a ticket,but I didn't get a receipt,so there is not a good chance that I cannot get my receipt,right since it has been since January that I got my winning?
I've dealt with the same thing. In fact, there was a chain of convenience stores in the New Orleans area that wouldn't cash any ticket, even for $1. All they would do is give another ticket. I don't know if they are still doing that, but my only recourse was to simply not shop there anymore.
I usually run into this problem when I've tried to cash a $20 or $50 ticket at a small store like Circle K. They don't keep much in the register, so they aren't always able to cash them. What I do in those cases is go to a large, nearby supermarket and they have no problem cashing it. Those places turn over a lot of cash, so they should have no problem. I've been told some retailers will give a money order for a large jackpot, but never run into that myself.