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Tennessee Gas Station Clerk Stole $1 Million Lottery Ticket, Police Say
NY TimesA Tennessee gas station clerk’s plan to cheat a customer out of a $1 million lottery ticket and to claim it for himself was thwarted after store video captured the clerk pretending to throw the ticket away and then celebrating after retrieving it from the trash, according to prosecutors.
The store clerk, Meer Patel, 23, of Murfreesboro, Tenn., has been charged with theft over $250,000. He went to Tennessee Lottery’s district office in Nashville on July 16 to cash the seven-figure winning ticket, according to court documents. But lottery employees became suspicious after analyzing Mr. Patel’s identification and hearing his story about finding the ticket in the trash, court documents said. The lottery employees then asked police to review video from the Shell station in Murfreesboro where the ticket was bought, the local station WSMV reported.
The images showed that on July 13, the buyer purchased a couple lottery tickets from the station and showed them to Mr. Patel to see if he had won any money, according to court records. Mr. Patel scanned the tickets’ bar code but “failed to disclose to the victim that it was a winning ticket and instead placed it in the trash,” records said.
“He knew it was a winning ticket,” Lt. Steve Craig of the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office said in an interview on Wednesday.
Winning tickets from the Tennessee Lottery display if they are worth more than $600, Lieutenant Craig said, clarifying that Mr. Patel knew that the ticket was worth more than $600 but not necessarily that it was worth $1 million.
After the buyer left, Mr. Patel then returned to the trash, picked up the winning ticket and is seen on video “celebrating in the store after scratching off the front of the ticket and learning it was a $1 million winner,” Detective Dennis Ward said in a news release.
At the winning customer’s request, the authorities did not release his name, but the sheriff’s office confirmed that the buyer, a father from the Antioch neighborhood of Nashville, was notified of his windfall gain. “He was very thankful” when he learned the sum, Mr. Ward said.
“The feel-good side of this story” is that he “never knew he was the winner until we made contact with him,” Lieutenant Craig said in a statement. “That is absolutely life-changing money.”
Tennessee Lottery declined to specify why employees were suspicious about Mr. Patel’s identification when he tried to cash the ticket. But Lisa Marchesoni, a public information officer for the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office, said that “he apparently used a paper copy of his passport for his identification,” raising red flags.
The phone number for the Shell gas station in Murfreesboro was not operating on Wednesday. Mr. Patel, who is being held at Rutherford County Adult Detention Center for $100,000 bond, could not immediately be reached for comment.
A court hearing is set for July 30.
Lottery tickets are often the subject of attempted theft, though it is not common for employees of stores that sell the tickets to be charged.
In 2013, three people — including two gas station clerks — were accused of stealing a $75,000 ticket and, in 2020, a Brooklyn lawyer was accused of fleecing millions of dollars from recent winners.
