Cut-and-paste lottery tickets scam store clerks

Saturday, November 25, 2006 posted 03:28 AM EST

HALIFAX - It's a simple little scam that relies on skill with scissors and inattentive store clerks, but it's gouging lottery-ticket sellers across metro.

Halifax police are tracking the progress of a scam involving "break-open" lottery tickets.

Over the last few weeks, a number of falsified tickets have shown up and been redeemed for amounts ranging from $1 to $100.

The tickets are faked by combining two losing tickets, usually by cutting and pasting symbols from one ticket to another.

"Then they exploit the retailer and hope they're not checking the security features on the tickets," said Halifax Regional Police Det.-Const. Dana Drover.

The culprits manage to convince the store clerk or gas station attendant to pay out the winnings, usually $50 or $100.

Not only are tickets being cut and pasted, but they're mangled in other ways to disguise the alterations.

"They will crease the ticket lengthwise from top to bottom so the fold helps disguise the icon that's been pasted on," said Drover.

Drover said tickets returned with obvious damage should be carefully checked.

In some cases, part-time store workers not completely familiar with the security measures on lottery tickets are targeted by the scam artists.

"It looks like these enterprising people are capitalizing on a knowledge gap," said Drover.

Atlantic Lottery Corp. spokesman Mike Randall said at least 10 cases have been reported to police.Lottery officials will be meeting with police to discuss ways of teaching store clerks ways to spot fake tickets.

"Unfortunately, things like this do happen from time to time," said Randall.

Drover said no arrests have been made yet, but a number of cases are under active investigation.

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