Note to anyone thinking of gaming the state lottery: it never works.
An Elgin, Illinois, woman tried to cash in on the record $656 million Mega Millions lottery jackpot with a ticket she bought online eight minutes after the winning numbers were drawn, officials said today.
Leandria Williams, 28, was initially charged with wire fraud last week for falsifying documents. She has now been charged with attempted theft and forgery, according to the Cook County sheriff's office.
An investigator from the Illinois Department of Lottery contacted the sheriff's office on April 4 after Williams came into the lottery claims office in Des Plaines and said she had a winning ticket for the Mega Millions jackpot drawn on March 30, officials said.
The ticket bore the winning numbers, but records showed only three Mega Millions winners and none of those tickets were from the Chicago area, officials said.
Lottery logs showed Williams' ticket was produced shortly after 10 p.m. on March 30, eight minutes after the winning numbers were drawn. Williams also produced an email receipt that was altered, officials said.
Lottery officials told Williams she had to complete a claim form that would be sent to Springfield for verification. Williams filled out the form and submitted her fraudulent documents, officials said.
Lottery officials and police met with Williams on April 16 and she was arrested. Officials said today that Williams' scam was the first of its kind in Illinois.
Good, she is an idiot.
There is a never ending supply of greedy morons.
Moral of this story: If your going to act like a moron, at least wear a pink swine cap so we can spot you coming.
Know matter what.....You can't fix "gormless"
I've worked in banking for 10 years and have seen it all...this doesn't surprise me...just surprised this is the first time it has happened.
This may not be the "first time" this has happened. We are just hearing about this recent isolated story courtesy of Todd.
Stupid,stupid stupid!
LOL....No she didn't!!!!!
It's not the first time it has happened, scammers use to claim that the terminal clock was off and flip over too soon. PowerBall cut-off or flip the clock an hour before the drawing and I think MM has started doing it too in Ohio although all the local games can be played up to 15 mins. before the drawings. I always play MM and PB an hour before the drawing to be safe.
Its funny both powerball and megamillions draw at 11 pm (i believe so anyway)...in New York the
Cutoff time for MM is 10:45 PM...
Cutoff time for PB is 9:30 PM
I find this discrepancy heinously strange....
i would imaging the 9:30 P.M cutoff time would cause countless million in lost sales during frenzied jackpots....
Must be different depending on the state. My NH lottery website says you have until 9:50 PM to play PB. Just visted the NY lottery website
where it indicated you have only to 9:00 PM.
Cook county $CAMMER$ may not BD >>>>>>>BEST!!!!!!!!!!!!!
They R..........................................." THE MOST "
If Shakespeare were alive today he would be writing "To scam or not to scam....that is the question"
We need to be more grateful for our precious resource of scammers for the following reasons:
1. Keeps our law enforcement people gainfully employed.
2. Sets a good example for the rest of us, of what things we shouldn't be doing in our spare time.
3. Provides us with free entertainment in the form of these great media stories.
You may be right McG...i just remember i was talking to my friend about LP and numbers i knew %100 were gonna come out...and he got all enthusiastic....so we hopped in my car and drove up to the local BP...and ran inside and the guy was like, "times over"...and i was like" You are fu-king kidding me right?" And he was like "no'...
and then the wise ass clerk was like in his indian accent..."you should make a chart and put it on your wall"...i just looked at him and didn't say nothing...(its a good idea though, i have a lot of lottery crap on my walls...winning tickets too)
" I said cmon its f-cking saturday night"...It could have been 9. Thats fifty bucks that could have been spent and a potential millon dollar disaster for me. Thats when i decided to never play powerball until, it proves it can get a jackpot like the MEGA Millions...which is tonite btw.
NYL doesn't know its a-- from its elbow...Seems like a total marketing disaster to me.
Truly a krotchwaffle....can't believe someone thought they could pull that off.She should be publicly flogged lol
it's good when thieves are stupid.
At least she went for the BIG one!!
JohnnyBgood07, you put two words together up there that have me in hysterics...what is a krotchwaffle?
The terminals at horse racing tracks are suppose to shut down when the race starts, but one day at Thistledown they stayed open until after the race was over. Some of the Tellers noticed it and made lots of bets; they were caught, fired, and charges were filed. Saw a women get caught past-posting on a Roulette table and she was escorted away by security.
Bet lots of scammers thought about trying past-posting when the lottery began selling tickets online. But only the dumbest would try it with the record MM jackpot.
She must not be aware that this is the computer age...where computers can automatically determine which locations sold the winning numbers once the drawing is done.
she is AH stand^thief>>FAKE>>yes>but vote 4 her FFEEDOM!!!!!!
she made a mistake 2 promote poor people 2 futher<<<<<<<<yes<<<<<MORE PROVERTY 4 her FREEDOM!!
And it knows where they are drawn before also.
LOL, Yes she did, she'll be on Americas dumbest criminals.
Dumb as a box of rocks...literally.
L.L.
I hope there's room in the prison.
I think most of the Illinois Governors are in there.
Say hello to Blago, Leandria!
I wonder if the guy that tried to rob a bank with the note on the back side of his deposit slip, is a relative.lol
She probably didn't read the whole book ,on how the early-bird gets the worm.I'm glad there's stupid people like this it makes you feel better when you do something dumb.
Well if she was only trying to get fifteen minutes of glory ,........that's about all she got.lol
I agree she is a dim-numb-nut. Chicago tends to be home of the crooked and corrupt. Guess that is a side effect of being a bastion of blue. I won't be surprised if corruption and voter fraud surfaces in November, but I am surprised Oby and the Dems haven't proposed a special extra 10 percent jackpot lottery winner surcharge as a way to fund his monstrosity of a healthcare law and bring a warped sense of fairness to all those who play and don't win the lottery. I am just glad the lottery commission busted her so all the other honest Illinoisians can continue to enjoy the convenience of purchasing tickets online.
<scratching head>...I wonder if she works at McDonalds ????
That's the part that's realy mindboggling. I hardly expect everyone to know all the details of how it works, but you've got to be incredibly stupid to think that all you have to do is make a ticket that looks real. At the very least, does she have any clue at all about how the lotteries know whether or not there was a winner, so they know what the next jackpot should be?
Actually, rdgrnr, former Illinois Govenor Blago was allowed to choose his prison. Therefore, his team researched, and found a place, outside Illinois, which stood out for its abundant freedoms ... and now Blago has been there 1.5 months.
Apparently, Blago immediately started jogging every day, has lost the 15 lbs. overweight he had, and is enjoying both. It is also reported, by the main media, that Blago's fellow prisoners (fellow thieves, etc.) are glad to know him and treat him as celebrity. Several of we income tax payers in Illinois, though, are still very upset at the unnecessary millions of dollars Blago put us in the red to spend; as it will take us (and the generation under us) 25 years or so to return to the 'black'!
would of been more funny if there was no winner that draw and she still tried to use a fake ticket
Whoa, sounds like he's got it pretty good.
I wonder if he gets salon privileges for that fancy hairdo?
I'd hate to see him lose that.
That would be cruel and unusual punishment though, I think.
She'll probably do his hair..
LOL good one Sully.
I hope she hasn't or ever will reproduce.
LOL!
I hope she knows how to do that Justin Bieber thing he's got goin' there.
What. An. Idiot. I guess little miss crap-for-brains forgot about the time stamps that are electronically recorded when a ticket is sold, or the accompanying verification numbers down at the bottom of the ticket. Normally, I'd feel sorry for someone who was so desperate that they'd resort to something like this, but this was just plain greed on her part. Toss her ass in the clink; she deserves it!
I have a book, "America's Dumbest Criminals."
One of the stories was about a woman in Oregon who altered her lottery ticket to match the $20 prize.
The sad thing was that she did not realize that her ticket was a $5,000 winner.
Sad? Thats hilarious!
That's what I thought, LOL.
Great minds think alike~;)
Sad for her.
Hilarious for us.
How can ANYBODY be that stupid?
Oh I think stupid is pretty indiscriminate as to whom it selects - it will take pretty much anybody and it was obviously this woman's turn.
What makes this story even funnier is that I also live in Elgin. I don't know her though. Maybe she was bored? Nothing exciting ever happens in this town.
I didn't know that this lady was arrested for fake jackpot winning lottery ticket. At 7:45 PM on the day of the draw is usually closes all of the drawings.
"I didn't know that this lady was arrested for fake jackpot winning lottery ticket."
Yeah, it's true.
There's even a story about it on the top of page one of this thread.
Check it out.
She faked what?
It's ok, serge, it's not about the same thing they fake with you.
As long as they fake alot, I have no reason to worry.