Investigators have ‘good evidence’ from theft of Greenbrier lotto tickets

The Faulkner County Sheriff’s Office and Arkansas Lottery Commission are investigating the theft of four books of lottery tickets from a Greenbrier convenience store. 

According to a report released by FCSO, the tickets were delivered to a Greenbrier Flash Market on Oct. 23 and were reported stolen by the store manager on Oct. 28.

The thief or thieves who have the tickets, which would be valued at $1,200 prior to their theft, are now holding worthless paper as the tickets were not — and now won’t be — activated, according to a lottery security official. According to the report, the suspects attempted to cash the worthless tickets at another convenience store, giving investigators some leads to follow.

“We have some pretty good evidence in the Greenbrier case,” lottery security director Lancy Huey said on Monday.

Huey said the Greenbrier case is the third alleged theft of lottery tickets since the lottery began on Sept. 28, though the lottery commission has investigated other attempts to defraud the lottery.

“There is a certain group of people that prey upon anything, and the people that attempt to defraud and steal are still trying to figure out avenues to steal or to alter lottery tickets,” Huey said, and their efforts have so far been unsuccessful in Arkansas.

On Nov. 3, Jonesboro authorities arrested the second of two men suspected to have stolen about $2,400 worth of lottery tickets from a Kum and Go convenience store there. On Monday, Huey said, a man was arrested after allegedly trying to cash a losing scratch-off lottery ticket forged to look like a winner.

These attempts failed because of control measures put in place by the commission, Huey said. Lottery tickets, each of which carries a numerical “fingerprint,” are worthless from the time of their printing until they are changed to active status by lottery security officials a few batches at a time as they are set out for display and purchase, he said.

Should thieves steal activated tickets, Huey said, the tickets would be classified as stolen and inactive shortly after their theft was reported. Further hindering criminal attempts, he said, are the security camera systems in place at nearly all places where lottery tickets are sold.

Anyone trying to cash stolen tickets, or ones that are flagged as stolen after the attempt to cash them, leaves behind a trail of digitally time-stamped evidence that investigators can use to pull up security camera images from the time the attempt was made.

This leaves those attempting to defraud the lottery with another avenue, Huey said: a scam involving the gullibility of an unwitting accomplice.

Huey explained that in this scam, the scammer attempts to compel someone to cash a bogus ticket for them by promising that they can pocket the winnings in exchange for something, usually money.

“Let’s say it’s one of the lottery tickets that’s 1,000,” Huey said. “Someone might say that they’ve got trouble with the IRS or child support, and ‘if I try to cash this in Little Rock they’ll take it from me, but you can just give me $600 and cash it and keep the rest.’”

At worst, the victims of this type of scam may be left trying to tell investigators or a judge their tale of how they came to have a stolen or fraudulent lottery ticket. “At the least they’re out their money,” Huey said.

Anyone with information pertaining to the theft of lottery tickets — or any other crime — is urged to contact FCSO at 450-4914.

(Staff writer Joe Lamb can be reached at 505-1238 or by E-mail at joe.lamb@thecabin.net. Send us your news at www.thecabin.net/submit.)