Writer
Everyone wants to win the lottery. Most people buy tickets and just hope for the best. Some attempt to develop systems that will improve their chances of winning and a few mathematical geniuses have even devised complicated formulas that guarantee they'll collect jackpots.
However, a small group of people decided they couldn't depend on their math skills or luck to win a big prize, so they turned to a different technique: theft.
They say crime doesn't pay, but that didn't stop this collection of criminals from attempting to steal their way to a top lottery prize.
Double trouble
The line between good and evil can be thin, and Lakiesha Deshawn McGhee decided to cross it one fateful night in January 2022. McGhee was a nurse working in South Georgia when she decided to make a stop at her local convenience store, the J&J Dollar Store.
She was playing video poker when three armed men burst into the store, demanded money from the clerk, Sabrina Renee Dollar, and shot her in the chest when she didn't comply fast enough and then left.
To her credit, McGhee did call 911 once the robbers left, and she tried to render first aid to the fatally wounded Dollar.
However, what she did next put her in the crosshairs of the law. Taking advantage of the chaos following the shooting, law enforcement officers alleged that she disabled the store's security system and stole lottery tickets from the counter.
A statement released by Houston County Sheriff Jon Holland noted that. The statement said:
However, evidence was discovered that showed (McGhee) removing lottery tickets from the office where the victim was found. Also, McGhee disconnected the power to the building security system for a brief period before law enforcement and other first responders arrived.
McGhee was arrested shortly after the robbery and charged with theft and tampering with evidence.
$10K to $10 million
After winning a massive lottery prize, there's a temptation to tell the people around you so they can help you celebrate your big win. However, sometimes, the people you can trust when you have nothing can become devious criminals when you have something worth taking.
A lottery winner in Vacaville, California, learned this the hard way when he thought he had won a $10,000 prize on a $30 scratch-off ticket.
The man, who chose to remain anonymous, was so excited by his big win that he told his two roommates about it. That night, he went to sleep, and in the morning, he took his ticket to the California Lottery claim center in Sacramento to collect his prize.
However, his euphoria was spoiled when the state lottery officials informed him that the ticket was not a winner and that it appeared to have been altered. The man knew someone had taken his real ticket and immediately thought of his roommates.
"He suspected one of his roommates must have stolen his winning ticket while he was sleeping and immediately reported the theft to the police department," the Vacaville Police said in a statement.
That suspicion was confirmed when the man's roommate, Adul Saosongyang, went to the same Sacramento lottery office to attempt to cash in a ticket that he claimed was his own. He might even have gotten away with it, except for one major problem: The ticket wasn't worth $10,000; it was worth $10 million.
For a prize of that size, lottery officials will investigate to confirm that they're giving the money to the correct winner. When they reviewed footage from the grocery store where the winning ticket was purchased, they saw that Saosongyang wasn't the real buyer.
After his unsuccessful attempt to collect his prize, Saosongyang was arrested and charged with theft by Vacaville police detectives, and the ticket was returned to the rightful winner.
Light my fire
They say that sometimes the cover-up is worse than the crime, but, in the case of one Ohio store clerk, both were so bad that they ended up facing over a dozen felony charges.
Traci Weills was a former city councilwoman who managed the Main Stop convenience store in Pioneer when she hit upon a not-so-brilliant scheme: she would steal lottery tickets from her employer. However, unlike McGhee, the nurse who grabbed a handful of tickets from a display case, Wells worked her operation on an industrial scale.
Authorities allege she stole $89,000 worth of lottery tickets from the Main Stop. She then passed the tickets to her husband, Kevin Weills, who cashed in the winners, collecting a total of $46,000.
While her crime worked in the short term, Traci faced the problem of being unable to account for the money from the tickets she claimed to have sold. She forged receipts and even altered records in the Lottery Commission's communication system to cover her tracks. But, as her scheme unraveled, she took the desperate step of setting a box of lottery ticket receipts on fire in her store while customers were inside.
Despite this, the police were able to unravel her crimes, and in addition to being charged with theft for stealing the tickets, she also faced three counts of aggravated arson for her attempts to destroy the records.
Traci and her husband were both arrested for the crime and are facing sixteen criminal charges combined.
Hands up
The criminals knew exactly what they were doing. In a video released by the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, two men calmly walked into a 7-11 in Arlington Heights, California, and without saying a word to the shocked clerk, jumped over the counter and immediately grabbed armfuls of scratch-off lottery tickets.
They stole thousands of dollars worth of lottery games in just twenty seconds. If the criminals seemed to know what they were doing, it was because they had plenty of practice.
Los Angeles Sheriff's believe that this specific crew may have been involved in up to 44 similar robberies of lottery retailers. The total value of their scratcher haul exceeded $250,000, and the criminals were able to cash in their winning tickets and collect $90,000.
However, after dozens of successful robberies, their luck finally ran out when law enforcement hit their own jackpot. After an extensive investigation by the LA Sheriff's major crimes division, a detective identified a vehicle that had been spotted at several other lottery ticket robberies. He staked it out with several other officers and tracked the crew to the Arlington Heights robbery.
When they left the store with armfuls of scratchers, the police revealed themselves and arrested the entire group, including three adults and one minor. The adults were taken to Men's Central Jail for booking, and the juvenile was detained at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall.
Not living the Luxe life
On November 4, 2024, Arthurica Jackson walked into the Texas Lottery Commission office in Austin with a winning lottery ticket and a smile as wide as the Rio Grande. Ten days later, she had a different expression when she was arrested by police in Hearne, Texas.
So how did she go from multi-millionaire to convict in less than two weeks?
When Jackson appeared in the state lottery offices, she was carrying a $50 Luxe scratcher game called Luxe that gives players 35 numbers to match to seven winning numbers. She told officials that she had purchased the ticket from a convenience store in her hometown of Hearne.
Her winning ticket was worth $5 million, and due to the size of the prize, officials conducted an official investigation to determine if Jackson was the ticket's rightful owner. While officials verified the ticket, Ahmad Shaik contacted the Hearne police to report a theft.
Shaik told officers that he had recently hired Jackson to work as a clerk at the QuickPump gas station and convenience store he owned and that within days of employing her, she stole from him.
While reviewing footage from his surveillance cameras, he said he watched her remove several lottery tickets from the display case and uncover the barcode. She would then check the barcode on a scanner to verify winning tickets. When she discovered the jackpot winner, she immediately left the store without paying for the ticket.
Instead of collecting a big check and telling reporters how she planned to spend the money, Jackson was arrested and charged with theft and fraud.
Ironically, if she had just paid for her winning ticket instead of stealing it, she'd be a millionaire today instead of a convict.
The clerk was a jerk
When a man showed up at the Short Stop convenience store in La Grange, Oregon, with a handful of lottery scratchers, he looked like any other player, hoping he was holding a ticket worth a fortune. But when the clerk scanned his games, he told the man that none of them were winners and sent him out the door without a dime.
However, that wasn't completely true. While most of the tickets were losers, one was worth $25,000. The clerk had lied and pocketed the ticket for himself. After the man left the store, the clerk mailed the winning ticket to the state lottery offices with a signed claim form stating that he was the ticket's rightful owner.
He eagerly waited for his check, but instead of feeling the joy of depositing a few thousand dollars into his bank account, he felt the tight, cold embrace of handcuffs around his wrists.
What the clerk didn't realize when he was scanning the tickets was the man wasn't just an ordinary lottery player. Instead, he was an undercover officer with the Oregon state police's lottery security division who was testing the integrity of lottery retailers.
The clerk was arrested and charged with aggravated theft, theft by deception, and forgery in the first degree.
Despite the temptation to steal winning tickets, Oregon police say retail lottery theft is rare. After conducting almost 200 sting operations, they've only caught two cases.
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