.... if you allow a clerk to check your tickets. Almost 1 in 5 California ticket sellers will rip you off according to this article. That's an incredible number.
We only play a few times a year when it gets big and we pool with friends/family. Not sure how you don't know if you won or not. I know when my tickets are winners or losers.
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"Your job is to verify lottery tickets.
Someone has just handed you a ticket worth thousands of dollars.
Would you pocket it and cash it yourself?
Clerks at five Twin Cities stores did just that during the Minnesota State Lottery's first compliance test, authorities said. The clerks and three accomplices now face felony charges of lottery fraud.
"(We) really need our retailers to be honest and to have their employees do it right every time," said state lottery director Clint Harris.
The stings took place last December and January at 186 randomly selected metro stores, Harris said. Undercover agents would ask clerks to verify the specially constructed crossword game scratch-offs as winners. The prizes ranged from $7,000 to $21,000.
"Our goal was to find out how people would handle those tickets, and what instructions they would give," said John Willems, director of alcohol and gambling enforcement for the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, which had agents help with the sting.
Lottery tickets worth more than $600 must be verified and cashed in at lottery headquarters — which is what the clerks were supposed to tell the undercover agents. But a few are accused of saying the tickets were losers and offering to toss them. Those clerks then tried pocketing the winnings by cashing the tickets at lottery headquarters themselves, sometimes by using an accomplice.
Fewer than 3 percent of the clerks involved in the sting violated the law.
To me, that's somewhat positive," said Harris, who noted a similar test in California found 18 percent of 450 stores checked broke the law. "It would be great if we can get to zero."