Millions of people buy lottery tickets every year in hopes that they will win money. People try all sorts of techniques to increase their odds of winning and one interesting statistic has emerged about lottery winners. Surprisingly, a very large percentage of winners happen to work at a store where lottery tickets are also sold. Their friends and family are apparently lucky as well. They may cash in a lot of smaller tickets or may cash in a large one but store clerks and people they know seem to be consistent winners?
So what is their strategy and what can you learn from it? Well, the first thing you need to know is that a majority of store clerk’s winning lottery tickets weren’t bought by them in the first place. They rightfully belong to someone else and these clerks are in on a variety of scams. Here are some of the common scams:
The scanning scam works when someone brings in their ticket or tickets to be scanned by the clerk to see if they are winners. Only the clerk can see the results so when a winning ticket is scanned, the clerk simply lies to the rightful owner and pockets the winning ticket and hands the customer a worthless ticket or a ticket with a smaller winning amount. The customer is none the wiser and the clerk can turn the ticket in or get a family member or friend to do it for them.
Another shady tactic is one that the customer is in on and the victim is the state or a child who is entitled to child support. The customer has a winning ticket but has a garnishment, tax or child support issue that would take their winnings. So the clerk offers to “buy” the ticket for less than the winning value. So the clerk buys the ticket from the customer for $1500 which nets him a profit of $500 and the customer gets $1500 tax free money. The state or child are the losers in this scam but are victims nevertheless.
State lotteries are aware of these scams and are cracking down on them. They are now running verification checks by asking where the ticket was bought and when. Just claiming you “found” it will not help you pass muster. They have the technology to see when and where the winning ticket was sold along with video of the rightful owner.
States are now conducting scams of their own. They simply print up winning tickets to a game that has never been sold anywhere and they go around spot checking store clerks to see who will honestly tell them that their tickets are winners or who will say they were losers. This was recently the topic of a recent investigative TV show. The results were very interesting. There is a whole lot of scamming going on.
Another thing to beware of is a lottery pool where everyone puts their money in to buy tickets and agree to split the winning. Agreements like this often end up in court which is why you should have you pool’s agreement in writing and every member of the pool should have a printout of ALL of the tickets bought with the pool’s money. Sadly, trust often does not stand the test of greed, so don’t just trust that your pool members will do right by you.
So here are some tips to ensure that you never end up as a victim or as another court case fighting over winnings.
If you buy the ticket solely for yourself SIGN IT RIGHT AWAY. That way no one else can turn it in and claim your money.
If you are in a pool, have a signed agreement between all members; give every member a copy of that agreement, as well as copies of the tickets that belong to the pool. Don’t forget to be specific about the dates of the agreement.
Don’t hand your tickets over to a clerk to scan for you. If you do, make sure they are signed and you watch as they scan them and get your tickets back, even if the clerk says they are not a winner. Most states are putting scanners that customers can do themselves. You can also check online to see if you have a winning ticket.
Play it safe and protect yourself. The only thing worse than not winning, is finding out that you did win, and lost it all to a scammer.
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