Jane's Place

Here's a scam a local store here in NJ was doing:

I bought three $5 scratch-off lottery tickets once (it's a good way to pass the time when you are early for an appointment) but I noticed that the small serial number portion was scratched off on two of them. The game portion was fully in tact though.   I realized right away that the ticket was checked by the store-owner already using the code instead of playing the game.    That is how they verify a winning ticket, but they know that everyone does not know that.

So the store owner, was selling tickets she had already ruled-out as losing tickets!
I reported it to the lottery commission, because I felt bad for all the people who didn't catch what they were doing, and were scammed.    The serial number part of the ticket is so small, that the average person wouldn't even notice.
The lottery commissioner didn't really know what to do about it.  He strangely seemed to be more concerned about what I thought, as if he were afraid I would alert the press.    He kept calling me back to let me know what he was doing in his investigation.   He made a trip to the store, and the store owner did admit to selling them, but made up a story on how her husband scratched the code off and she didn't know. The commissioner didn't really believe her story.   The commissioner called me back, and actually told me he was unsure what to do, and they would leave it up to me, if they could keep their lottery machine or have the commission remove it from their store.  I didn't  want to get that involved, I just wanted to alert them that people were being ripped off.   So I just recommended a warning, not to be the bad guy.   Who knows how long they were getting away with that though?

I wanted to post this here, in case anyone here buys them too.  They make it so easy for a store owner or worker to do this, so I imagine it happens in other stores too.   What they should do is put the ticket's serial number in the center of the game portion, so that the buyer would notice it being exposed.    No?

Jane