Man paid $1,500 on $4,000 scratch ticket
The lottery machines and scratch tickets were pulled from Kirsch Liquors in Worcester, Massachusetts, last month, after a man was scammed there when he received only $1,500 on a $4,000 winning scratch ticket, a state Lottery Commission official said.
The Lottery Commission will file a decision by the end of the month on whether to suspend the store's lottery license for 30 days or indefinitely.
Damaso Vasquez told Lottery Commission authorities he bought a $1 ticket from the store at 646 Main St., and when he found it was a winner, he took it back to the store on Sunday, according to Lottery Commission spokeswoman Beth A. Bresnahan.
Mr. Vasquez said someone at the store gave him $1,500 and took the ticket. Mr. Vasquez became suspicious, however, once he learned that winning scratch tickets worth $600 or more cannot be redeemed in stores and must be taken to a Lottery Commission regional office, Ms. Bresnahan said.
The scratch ticket winner filed a complaint at the Lottery Commission's office in the city on April 3 and an investigation was immediately started, resulting in the removal of all lottery tickets and lottery machines from the store.
"They were suspended immediately once the claim was filed," Ms. Bresnahan said.
The winning Wild Cherries ticket was cashed and the person who cashed it in told investigators he was paid by the store's owner, Robert Kirsch, to cash it, Ms. Bresnahan said. The man who cashed in the ticket was a former employee of Kirsch Liquors, she said.
By coincidence, Kirsch is the German word for "cherry."
The state Lottery Commission's Web site places the odds of winning the $4,000, the highest prize on the ticket, at 1 in 144,000.
Mr. Kirsch said today he had no comment after serving a man who asked whether there were scratch tickets available, only to have the owner shake his head no. Mr. Kirsch then said a former employee was responsible for the scam, and said the employee was fired before the ticket scandal.
I say check the rules yourself, sign ticket and make a copy verify your ticket against what constitutes a winner. Are you really in that big of a hurry? And these attendants, and lottery operators......I don't know what to say. I guess trust is like a secret.....Its only guranteed when you limit it to your self!
Some clerks will take advantage of customers who don't know all the rules of a lottery games.
Once when Ohio was promoting a lottery game with a free QP with every $5 ticket purchased I had to remind a clerk the free ticket was for me the customer and not for her, she had been keeping the free QPs for herself when customers didn't know about the promotion.
I hope you turned her in to the lottery commission. If more get caught and punished, maybe it would deter at least a others from even trying it.
No I didn't but I later told the store owner who found out she was also stealing from the store and fired her. The store owner should have expected as much since she was trying to run a small store paying her employees less than they could make at Wal-Mart two blocks away, she was only getting people that no one else would hire. Her store later went out of business.
Usually a few certain stores (name withheld) are Fast to see me as a Mark and they add a few dollars to my Lottery total. The problem at this Store is it's hard to see the readout on the Lottery terminal. Be careful at such a place! When you validate a ticket READ THE TERMINAL WINDOW and KNOW the game you're playing so you KNOW what the prize should be and make SURE it matches their readout. In this situation nothing got scanned or entered and that ALONE should be highly suspicious.
State lotteries should have undercover agents going around cashing winning tickets looking for these payout scammers.
If an employee is the one doing this then suspend the store for 30 days. If the owner is involved, pull the tickets and machines permanently.
If I ever found out a store I was buying lottery tickets in was doing this, they would never see me again.
now there's a job I could sink my teeth into....
Rest assure we are out there ....but we can't get to them all. If you think you were scammed call the Lottery in your state and make a complaint.
All I know is that those stories are very true to the fact, there is a store here I'm not naming any names though they have like all these winnings posted but you know what when I ask around to the regs that go there none of them respond to those winnings. I don't purchase alot of scratch offs but when I do I go to the machines instead.
Had far much better luck from a machine than human.