Have you ever wondered what happens to lottery tickets when they are stolen? Actually how many cases of stolen tickets have you ever heard of? Apparently, stealing tickets is an option, but who could actually do this, well guess. Mega lottery

A few years ago, Dateline NBC ran an undercover sting into lottery prize thefts. They went into 50 different stores to check a stack of lottery tickets. One of the tickets in the stack was a $1000 winner. The undercover customer, who was wearing a hidden camera, would give the clerk his tickets to have them checked and then continued shopping in the store. The goal of the was to see if the clerks would be honest enough to tell the customer that they won $1000 or not. Just a random experiment to test the waters.

Out of the fifty stores seven clerks lied. Seven of the clerks scanned the $1000 winner, yet told the customer that they didn’t win anything.

The Tennessee Lottery on Tuesday presented a $200,000 Powerball prize to a Sumner County man whose winning ticket was stolen by two convenience store clerks earlier this year. Powerball lottery

Roy Chase, a retired employee of the Ford Glass Plant took his took the winning Powerball ticket to the Xpress Mart on North Broadway in Portland on June 3rd to see if he had matched any of the numbers of the game´s drawing which took place two days before. The clerk Kanubhai Bhatt scanned the ticket, saw that it was a winner but told Chase otherwise.

On August 29th, Piyushkumar Patel, Bhatt’s son-in-law, tried to cash the ticket at the Lottery’s headquarters in Nashville. When this happened, lottery officials conducted an investigation and discovered what had happened.

Bhatt and Patel were arrested and charged with felony theft over $60,000 and are scheduled to appear in Sumner County courtroom next month.

For those who don´t know, the Lottery runs a very detailed investigation when people claim big prizes, and this time it was in favor of the rightful winner. However how many winnings might have gone astray to the hands of lottery thieves? How many tickets worth in smaller prizes might be in the hands of the wrong winner? We might never have the answer but this story is a reminder that lottery players should always sign the back of their tickets and always check their tickets carefully instead of simply trusting them to just anybody.

Thankfully, Mr. Chase was given what he deserved. He reported feel very blessed to be able to receive his winnings after such an experience. It is also a lesson, Mr. Chase most probably will not be a trusting with clerks next time or he might resource to other ways of checking tickets.