The former manager of a San Bruno gas station has been charged with cheating people who purchased California lottery scratchers after he figured out a way to secretly check which tickets were winners.
He would then sell the losing tickets to gas station patrons.
Most people who bought the scratcher tickets probably never noticed something was odd, but one customer did notice her ticket had been tampered with.
At the bottom of the ticket there were markings as though someone had scratched it with a pin or other sharp object.
It's what the California Lottery Commission calls "pinning," a way retailers can secretly check whether tickets are winners or losers, and then keep the winners and sell only the losing tickets to customers.
The California Lottery Commission sent undercover investigators to the gas station and the manager sold them four more altered tickets.
"We've had theft of lottery tickets, we've had a variety of manufactured, but this is the first time we've had this new thing called 'pinning' of a lottery ticket," San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe told KTVU.
Wagstaffe said the gas station manager, 27-year-old Shoiab Muhammed Mustafa of Pacifica, was arrested November 17th. He faces five felony counts of computer fraud and a misdemeanor charge. Investigators said he stole at least $300.
While it is not a large sum of money, they do not know when the alleged fraud might have been started or how many people might have been victimized.
"Think of the fraud that exists out there if we don't crack down hard on this. We'd have people out there who are taking total advantage. We don't know the extent that was done by this defendant Mr. Mustafa," Wagstaffe said.
KTVU reached the gas station owner Reza Mahmoodi, who says Mustafa was let go after staff checked surveillance cameras inside the store and saw some suspicious behavior. He had been an employee about one year prior to his arrest.
The Lottery Commission said the business will be allowed to continue selling tickets, since the investigation did not reveal any wrongdoing on the owner's part.
The defendant Mustafa told KTVU by phone that he had no comment and would have his defense attorney respond to any questions.
Wagstaffe said this case reveals a potential need for state lottery officials to better safeguard the scratchers.
"What they need to do is to change the system so that the ability of the people who deal these tickets, to see, 'Hey, do I have a winner or a loser?' is eliminated. They need to be as much in the dark as anybody else," Wagstaffe said.
Mustafa has been released from jail and has a court date set for January 15th.
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'Another one bites the dust!'
thats an old '27'...
Another peice of scum of the Earth
Ah, this man found a way to be cleaver and deceitful at the same time. May this man embrace living an honest lifestyle, instead, for the remainder of his life.
Note. Why only $400 received from this cleverness, had it been short-term?
amen
They should of had one of the undercover investigators scratch a 100k winner in front of dum dum and watch his reaction.
All that for just $300. I guess he thought he would not get caught.
Yeesh, the more of these stories I read, it makes you wonder if there's one honest lottery retailer left in the country!
Buy from the machine when you can! Until someone starts "rigging" those too, I guess.
They can load the machines with losing tickets you know, so not safe there either.
~Michael
Since the Cal Lottery were aware that their scratchers are subject to "pinning", because of their weak-ass security, why didn't they rectify it?. Both the thief and the lottery, are equally responsible. You leave your keys in the ignition, with the doors wide open, chances are somebody will try to steal your vehicle.
At least the instant ticket seller had to put some effort into it. Was a time in Pennsylvania, and presumably in other states that used similar systems, the ticket serial number was plainly visible - no scratching needed / no security codes. All the ticket seller had to do was enter that number, and the terminal would tell them if it was a winner. It became a widespread and publicized problem. Eventually, most lotteries switched to tickets with additional, covered security codes (and later, the entire serial number), which had to be scratched off, for them to be validated.
Sad to say, there are many shady lottery retailers. Buying from machine can be safer, but isn't infallible. A sure way to detect instant ticket fraud is to look at the three digit number of the ticket in the pack (000 to high as 299; higher denomination packs have less; some few as 20 tickets) - they should be in sequential order (ascending / descending doesn't matter) with no skips. If there are skips, that's a possible sign of tampering. Question the transaction and/or report the ticket seller to the lottery.
A minor exception to be aware of is playing from a machine with the same ticket loaded in more than one slot. The machine may switch over to the other pack prematurely, if the number of tickets requested exceeds what's remaining in the current pack. A work-around is to buy less tickets than what's remaining to avoid the issue. For example, if I'm seeking to buy out the current pack, which is also loaded in another slot, and I know there's 10 tickets left, I'll buy 8 (leave a fudge factor, since sometimes the first / last ticket may be missing / not dispensed) and then one at a time until the machine switches over to the next pack. This is not always necessary depending on how the tickets were loaded, but I've occasionally run into this issue.
Another unscrupulous retailer caught in the act of cheating players.
It's a first time for everything, now it is up to the lottery to make it the last time for this to happen. The retailer such be as much in the dark about which tickets are winner as we are when we buy them. They shouldn't be able to tell the winner until they are complete scratch off & run under the little machine check your ticket here.
For all the accusations about lotteries being fixed it's ironic that the lottery itself investigates such cases and it's those selling the tickets that are actually doing the 'fixing'.
touche
How about this as a sentence,>> DEPORTATION.!!
The stress from his criminal activities has caused him to appear to be in his 40's. Serves him right for having no integrity.
Sin & drugs does that too. It speeds up the aging process.
What a piece of s%it......
This type of thing must be nationwide to some degree. Boy what I wouldn't give to wail that bast%rd with a sock full of half-dollars a few times
and knock them eye brows off his fUkin head....<exsqueeze my french>
Kudos for catching the thief too CA! Unfortunately, as far as crooks they come from all race and colors. marigonman You have to go back and read more on the article where the young white clerk who was caught on video who lied to customers out of their winning tickets and pretending it was a losing tickets.. uh huh so check your source before igniting a race thing on lottery page. Crooks are crooks and ignorance is ignorance. Education can change ignorance, crooks are just bad seeds straight from the devil it may even come with a pretty face! Heck they're all ugly in there they need to be locked up and paid up then get their head squashed!!! yaaa!
You must have misunderstood me. All I said was plenty of Asians and Middle Easterns were getting caught in that show. Now I don't know if Chris Hansen targeted them on purpose or not but that is just what I saw. I'd be lying if I said plenty of African Americans were getting caught because I didn't see even one. Find the videos and see for yourself.
I agree, but I suspect it will not happen, unfortunately.
In some parts of the country it's Asians and Middle Easterners that run most of the convenience stores.
That's right. In the state of MA I'd say more than 60% of the convenience stores are owned and ran by those two. I just wish user71926 took time to watch the Chris Hansen episodes before concluding what he/she concluded.
In the modern day America, your name is not indicative of your nationality anymore. If Mustafa was born in the good ol' U.S of A, where do you DEPORT him to..AMERICA? What a novel concept. Think people think. Pacifica anyone?
What l have noticed, especially in these neck of the woods is that most Indian convenience store clerks & Owners will change their names to fit into American Society.l met one whose name was Harrison,l glanced at his hips thinking l would find a " whip"...Aka Indiana Jones.
may he go to a version of hell, with 77 virgin ... devils
I hope he gets locked up for a long time. I hate thieves.
Grimy dude. Hope he does some real time. I'm glad I dont buy scratchers, Just MM for me
It won't be to long before every convenience store will have a lottery machine.
That would be better. Too many thieves amongst us.
I'm not sure of how clerks can tell, I had a situation over the holidays with a scratch off ticket.... Stopped at a little gas station in KY, noticed a new ticket I've never seen before... Went to purchase ticket when the clerk says "wait a minute, let me check"? Hummm.... She goes over to a clip board, where all scratch offs were logged??? Then she says, this ticket will NOT be a winner, because two tickets ago just hit for $50? And I wouldn't want you to buy a losing ticket??? I said what?! Yea, I just wouldn't want you to waste money??? I said, you guys keep a running total of tickets won and lost??? It was just strange, I did buy it, just to see her squirm with my purchase.... Came back and emailed KY lottery about this... Just seemed strange, how the heck can she discourage anyone from buying a ticket?? Im sure with clerks daily interactions with scratchers, they did develop some type of system to tell which ones may win? Just last week, the gas station by my job... Went in to play pick 3, when I saw the clerk, who is the owner, scratching a new game... Then he says, I just won $500 bucks?! What?
Online Scratchers will end all of these criminals games and make the whole experience much greater.