Lottery Looters On The Loose
By MIKE GRAHAM wpix.com

10:50 a.m. EDT, July 12, 2010
NEW YORK (WPIX)—
The New York State lottery is hoping the luck runs out for some inventive crooks who have been stealing instant lottery tickets from unsuspecting small retailers in the Bronx, Queens and upper Manhattan.

The scam involves the bandits walking into grocery shops, delis and liquor stores and asking the clerks for a large number of scratch-off tickets, according to lottery officials.

Once the tickets are on the counter the thieves ask the worker for a rubber band, an envelope or anything to cause distraction.

Those stacks of tickets are then replaced with already scratched-off tickets with a new fresh ticket on top to make it appear as if they are the same stack, lottery officials said.

The suspect then makes an excuse that he needs to get his wallet from his car and leaves with the real tickets, never to return.

Lottery officials say one bandit has hit 15 stores.