Do you buy lottery scratch offs for gifts or for yourself??? Beware of pinning!!!

[UglyGreed]

Story is from 2012 but I thought it would be good to know if you do buy these tickets for gifts as my wife and I do for each other.

Check your Scratchers Ticket for "Pinning"

You dream of big bucks when you buy that Scratchers ticket. But Vicky Nguyen shows you a new scheme could be cheating you out of any chance of winning.

Wednesday, Sep 12, 2012 • Updated at 6:18 AM PST


You might think of players trying to game the system, but when it comes to Scratchers — it’s the retailers who are on the radar of law enforcement. The newest scheme is called pinning, and it allows cheaters to keep the winnings for themselves, while selling unsuspecting customers the losing tickets.

Scratchers are the California Lottery’s cash cow. Last year players spent $2.7 billion on the scratch-off tickets. The odds of winning big money are long enough, without cheaters like the store clerk in San Jose, caught on his own surveillance cameras. Lottery investigators say when he wasn’t working the counter, he was working over his customers, selling scratchers he *knew* were duds.



http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Check-your-Scratchers-Ticket-for-Pinning-169397746.html

[louis-t]

1. A lot of retailers got caught scamming winners, too.

I got scammed for $5 once. Handed the ticket to the clerk, he said "this ticket was cashed already." He wouldn't give me the ticket back. I raised a big stink, but he wouldn't give in. That same station got caught gouging people for ice during the big power outage and for gas after 9/11. They were forced out of business.

There were guys caught on their own surveillance videos taking a $10,000 winner from someone and saying it wasn't a winner, then jumping up and down and high-fiving each other after the person left.

[840high]

2. This happened in my area -

no longer selling lottery cuz they got caught.

[UglyGreed]

3. Funny that you mentioned that, what led me to this article

was this report, Half of N.J.'s most frequent lottery winners are lottery retailers, family members. Greed trumps all.

lottery-tickets-9b0e70f6561093e2.jpgEd Murray/The Star-Ledger

Half of the 20 most frequent New Jersey Lottery prizewinners since 2009 are reportedly either licensed lottery retailers or family members of store operators.

An investigation by the Asbury Park Press found that as a group, those 10 people collected 840 prizes totalling nearly $1.8 million and that about 70 percent of those payouts were for Pick 4 tickets, where the odds of winning are 1 in 10,000.

The New Jersey Lottery told the newspaper that it is investigating some of the people on the list to see if they're actually illegally cashing in other players' winning tickets for a percentage of the winnings.


http://www.nj.com/monmouth/index.ssf/2014/12/report_njs_most_frequent_lottery_winners_are_lottery_retailers_family_members.html