Investigator was paid $50 for ticket worth $20,000
OLYMPIA, Wa. — An employee of the City Limits Deli Mart in Sumner and her companion got an unpleasant surprise Monday when they traveled to Washington's Lottery headquarters to claim what they thought was a $20,000 prize.
Olympia police arrested the two women for allegedly trying to claim the prize through fraud or deception, according to a Lottery spokeswoman.
The alleged fraud occurred Thursday, when an undercover Lottery employee posing as a customer at the store conducted a random consumer compliance check, said Lottery spokeswoman Jacque Coe.
Coe said the investigator had a specially designed winning lottery ticket, and he gave it to the employee to check whether it was a winner.
The ticket indicated it was a winner, and that the person who possessed it was due $20,000, Coe said. But an employee told the compliance officer the ticket was worth a $50 payout, Coe said.
The woman kept the ticket after giving the Lottery employee $50, she said. On Monday, the store employee and a companion tried to claim the $20,000 ticket at Washington's Lottery headquarters on Fourth Avenue in Olympia, according to Coe. Lottery officials called Olympia police, and officers arrested the two women.
The compliance checks by Washington's Lottery have been ongoing for about a year and are meant to test proper ticket-cashing procedures, Coe said. Monday's arrests were the first of their kind, she added.
"This is unusual," Coe said.
Customers at any of the Lottery's more than 4,000 retailers must be able to rely on store clerks to give them the accurate value of their tickets, Coe said.
"Consumer protection is paramount to the integrity of the Lottery," she said.
Coe reminded Lottery consumers that they can always check the value of a winning lottery ticket by calling the Lottery's winning-numbers line at 1-800-545-7510. Stores that sell lottery tickets also should have scanners that customers can use to get an accurate value if a ticket is a winner, she said.
Retailers can pay out winning lottery tickets on-site only when they are valued at $600 or less, Coe said. Winning tickets in amounts higher than that must be cashed out at one of the state's six regional lottery offices – in Vancouver, Olympia, Federal Way, Everett, Yakima or Spokane – she said.
Coe said anyone who buys a winning lottery ticket should sign it to make sure no one else can claim it.
Coe said the investigation into the two women arrested at Washington's Lottery headquarters Monday is ongoing.
The Olympian is not releasing the names of the two women because they have not been charged with a crime. Both had been released from the Thurston County Jail as of Tuesday afternoon.
It remains to be seen which county prosecutor's office will have jurisdiction over the case. Thurston County Chief Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Jon Tunheim said he was unfamiliar with the case, but that it could be filed in either Pierce or Thurston counties.
This story is disturbing from every angle.
While I am glad the Lottery is trying to ensure customers are not deceioved and that stores are held accountable for stealing from customers I am disturbed at this particular sting.
"A speciallty designed winning ticket"? WTF is that?
If the Lottery can fake a winning ticket, let it show up on a machine as a winner, why should't I believe the whole darned thing is rigged? Wake up folks.
This needs an independent investigation.
I don't have a problem with a lottery official possessing a rigged ticket to set up a thief. I have a problem with the trust that is automatically
assumed when handing a ticket over to the person standing behind the machine. That trust has been violated many, many times...examples
reported here with larger amounts yet, remember?
Imagine the countless times where something like this wasn't reported because the prizes were much less. How easy to say the ticket is not a
winner and pocket even $50.
PA recently replaced old machines with new and supposedly better machines..one of the perks or add ons was a ticket reader. Scan the bar
of the ticket and get results stating whether or not you're a winner. Do it yourself, nothing better than that. I have seen some people hand
the ticket over to the clerk even after doing the scan themselves saying: I'm not sure about this one....
A huge downside is that these fancy, new machines DO NOT read instant tickets. Where is the sense in that move? PA and any other state that
has ticket readers need to put the ability to read instant tickets in place. AND people need to wake up and not be so trusting. Times are
hard but that comes and goes, thieves are a constant. Make sure YOU know before handing your ticket over to some smiling clerk...it's
not that hard to find out if you have a winner or not....newspapers, Internet, the actual drawing, letter codes on instant tickets, self scanning
machines. Beware.
If a person dosen't know how much his ticket is worth before he goes in to cash it they should not be buying lottery ticket..These clerks are just stupid because this has been tried before..They will never get away with it..Glad the lottery does this and no it's not rigged!!..
I gotta disagree tiggs. I bet they get away with it all the time.
Do you think that this was the first time that this broad ripped somebody off and she just happened to get caught by an investigator on her first try?
I don't.
I hope we hear what happens to her now since she hasn't even been charged with a crime.
Wait I don't understand, if they tried to claim a wrongful prize, why aren't they being persecuted by the AD? And as far as that winning ticket goes, from what I get of it, it wasn't part of the game itself in terms of sales, just a ticket that showed up as a winner that carried the label of the game? Hmm..., either case I hope they start doing this in all states, people don't hate me for saying this, but most people it's not that they don't care, it's just that they don't have the time to check up on everything and rely on honest clerks to tell them the truth, even if it is a purchase. I know I know.
So when it does happen, I say, Fry Em'! 
If you got time to go into a store and buy a ticket you got time to check the numbers to see if you won and how much the ticket is worth..
Once again tiggs is wrong..When will he ever learn..
"Wait I don't understand, if they tried to claim a wrongful prize, why aren't they being persecuted by the AD?"
I've got no idea why the lottery and the prosecutor wouldn't have figured it out ahead of time, but it sounds like they aren't sure if she should be prosecuted in the jurisdiction where the ticket was taken, or where she tried to claim the ticket. It seems to me there should be an easy answer to that: both. She committed one crime by fraudulently taking the ticket, and another by trying to claim the prize as her own.
I'd like to know why her companion was arrested. There's absolutely nothing in the article to suggest that the comanion did anything wrong.
I know the feeling tiggs.
I thought I was wrong once but luckily I was mistaken.
Throw the book at her....some of these clerks will take your teeth if you let them.
Neat trick. I hope all of the States employ this tactic, to bring some honesty back into the system.
It's got to be hard to police the retailers and their practices.
true that. It seems guys here would rather blame the honest victim rather than the crook. When you go to a store you expect to be dealt with in a fair manner and the law assures us so.
I agree , one gas station always has unsold tickets taped to the register in hopes some one just won' t be able to pass them up..always its for big jackpot games.
I've been guilty of buying some of those taped tickets. But, where I play, the tickets were usually generated when the customer wanted some other game or they could not pay for all of the tickets they asked for.
Mind you, I don't think I ever cashed in on any of these tickets, so that was a waste. But you never know who could have discarded the winning numbers.
In PA with the introduction of the scanners, it can only read one type of bar code scans. The instant tickets carry a Box with a different set of scans to be read. Consider it an entirely different type of bar code language. Sorta like it can read english but not gaelic.
I seriously would love to be one of the compliance ticket folks, here is what I would do extra...after they read the ticket and proclaimed the amount I would get the meager cash they claimed it was ...then ****** Ask them for the ticket so it can be signed on the back ! Boy would that get their goats :) You would only be complying with the" sign the back of the ticket" rule. Naturally It would take some finesse to pull that off as their faces would turn a shade of white :) I get it that basically they are entrapping a person so the DA would have to argue that was necessary ....Overall PA sure could use some compliance officers, seen way too many folks pull fast ones from behind the counter.
Actually, there was no encouragement to defraud committed by the lottery rep, so there was no entrapment. If the rep had been told an amount and then the rep offered to accept a lower payment due to an "existing tax issue" or such, that would be entrapment. Merely supplying the opportunity to commit a crime is not considered entrapment. Suggesting or encouraging the committing of a crime would be entrapment. But a defense lawyer would indeed try to argue that anyway.
But I do love your idea of a personal trap.That would be fun to videotape their reaction. YouTube for sure!
here in my town tyhey are soon installing player scanners so we can check our own tickets.
I have heard about scannerrs making mistakes and people tossing tickets.so still will have to hold on till after.
best to visually check your own numbers.
we do have a display facing the player, that shows the value of thew scanned ticket,m but i always felt a crafty crook could scan a known loser ,, behind their counter, showing a no win result. and pocket your ticket for later.
always assk for tickets back.
anyhow we have [player registrations here where the ticket is played and assigned to a pplayer card, not good for you identity freaks, but hell if it stops me being ripped off im going for the card. it also means they send out any lost or unclaimed prizes after a few weeks, ive had about 5 checks sent ion my time
alll low prizes unfortunaltely
I am with you Litebets.
In some ways I *almost* wish it were illegal for clerks to play the lottery, but I know that is unfair to them , especially since I worked at 2 different gas stations when I was younger (my first 2 jobs actually).
But undercover tests like this need to happen to ensure they are kept in line.
Signing the ticket would be a great idea if you thought the penalty for defrauding a player should only be a $50 fine. Simply making a mistake isn't a crime. If the clerk doesn't try to claim the prize how would you prove that they intended to defraud the player?
Thanks KY! Fortunately I was making lite of the situation. Didnt mean to make it a serious discussion. Life does that enough.
I'd like to see states all put in scanners that tell you what you've won and possibly stamp it on the ticket. I know there are those who say if you can't check your own ticket you shouldn't be playing and all that but in reality there are a lot of lower IQ people playing and we all know it. Why not give them a little confidence in the system or at least a way to know what they've got coming and are not going to be ripped off by some scheming clerk.
Tennessee is too backwards looking to have scanners and though Virginia has them they seldom work and when they do they only tell you that you've won but not how much. There are a lot of improvements that could be made in that area.
Sounds like entrapement, however it also goes to show how dishonest people can be, wow ! alot of people trust the person behind the register to be honest, i never hand my tickets to anyone to check for me, i check them myself.
I guess now I am wondering if the lottery office can print a winning ticket, then I can assume they know what the non-winning combinations are after 9:00 PM ( the cut off time for buying numbers) Are we really sure about which combination of numbers comes up? Ater all they can produce a winning ticket. So lets just bring up another non-winning combination tonight. we could'nt take a chance on multiple winners which, I never heard of. BUSTED ! I have been playing supercash since 1989. 15 bucks a night. yep thats almost 80 thousand dollars. I hit 500 bucks three times. something smells rotten. wecome to the NFL rookie
i agree with this also!!!! Or maybe lottery tickets should be sold by lottery officials only. I know that would be a pain but hey.
That's a slippery slope, ca-.
First it's lottery officials only.
Then it's government officials under a Lottery Czar.
Then it's government robots.
Then it's armed government robots.
Have you ever seen the movie Westworld with Yul Brynner?
Exactly.
This has nothing to do with non-winning combinations or the cut-off time for ticket sales. Every single lottery ticket is printed with a unique indentity, and that identity is one of the things the lottery uses to validate a ticket as a winner. The lottery could print a "winning" ticket for a game that doesn't exist. Modern technology means that anybody can print a ticket that looks like a real winner, as long as they know what a winning ticket looks like. Once the winning numbers have been drawn, or the design of a winning scratch ticket is known, anybody can know what the ticket should look like, except for the things that indicate that ticket's unique identity. It's the identity of the ticket being registered as a winner that matters.
In this particular instance the lottery could have printed a ticket for an online game (just as you or I could) with winning numbers once those numbers are known. That means sometime after the drawing has taken place. By entering the identity of that ticket into the lottery's database as a "valid" winner, it would be indicated as a winner by any online store terminal or a scanner available to the public. If it was a scratch ticket, it could have been printed as soon as the game and tickets were designed. Again, the identity of that particular ticket would have to be entered in the database.
At the store it will be reported as a real winner. Because the value is too high, the clerk can't pay the prize to the customer. If the clerk doesn't make a genuine mistake they should tell the customer that the ticket is a winner, but the customer will need to claim the prize directly from the lottery. If that hapens, the ticket can be used at th enext store, and so on, until a clerk chooses option number 2 and tells the "customer" that it's a modest winner and gives them a few bucks in hopes of claiming the real prize for themselves. When that does happen the clerk will presumably go to a claim center to present the ticket. On the lottery's end the ticket's identity will show that it's a special ticket for enforcement purposes, so that they can have the claimant arrested. That's exactly what happened here.
As a practical mater that's how it's already done.They retailers aren't employees or true legal agents of the lottery, but they are authorized by the lottery to sell the tickets.