Georgia gas station employee accused of stealing over $127,000 of lottery tickets in scanning scam
Mar 1, 2023, 6:10 pm (15 comments)
Georgia Lottery
Retailer employee "fake scans" lottery tickets to reap the rewards
https://www.lotterypost.com/news/344600
By Kate Northrop
WOODLAND, Ga — A gas station employee is accused of stealing over $127,000 worth of lottery tickets in a scheme he ran over time from behind the counter.
A Georgia man is behind bars after operating a "fake scanning" scheme that landed prizes from actual lottery winners straight into his own pocket.
On Feb. 24, gas station owner George Joseph phone police to report that he had caught one of his employees, Harish Bhatia, stealing from the store.
When deputies arrived, Joseph told them that his suspicions led him to place marked bills in the cash register, which he watched Bhatia grab and put in his pocket on the security camera. As an additional measure, Joseph sent someone into the store with winning lottery tickets for Bhatia to pay out.
Bhatia did pay out the lottery prizes with money from the register but did not scan the tickets through the Georgia Lottery terminal that would have registered the ticket.
The clerk then stuffed the winning tickets in his pants. It was enough for officials to arrest him for two felonies — theft by taking and theft by conversion.
Deputies searched Bhatia and found $1,400 in marked $100 bills, the ones that Joseph had placed in the cash register. He also possessed $830 worth of winning lottery tickets that he did not scan through the Georgia Lottery terminal.
In just the month of February alone, video surveillance revealed that Bhatia had done this 24 different times.
Bhatia would "fake scan" lottery tickets by hitting the "ticket inquiry" button instead of the "cash out" button on the Lottery machine. He would then take the tickets to a store in Columbus and cash them in for himself.
According to investigators, Bhatia stole $2,230 from running the scam on Feb. 24 and $22,910 for the entire month of February.
Joseph says that Bhatia has been his employee for five years and believes that he has stolen $127,954 in total from running the scam. He was alerted to the problem when someone left an anonymous letter at his store in Cataula that said Bhatia was cashing in tickets at an unnamed store in Columbus.
Bhatia is currently being held at Talbot County Jail and is charged with 24 counts of theft by taking and 24 counts of theft by conversion.
Lottery Post Staff