A Florida couple are accused of taping together parts of two different lottery tickets and trying to claim a $1million prize.
A couple are accused of creating a fake $1million lottery ticket to try to cash in on a fortune and were caught red-handed.
Dakota Jones and Kira Enders of DeFuniak Springs, Florida, allegedly forged a state lottery ticket by putting together two pieces of 500X The Cash scratch off tickets to make one that appeared to be a winner.
‘Each of those tickets were ripped horizontally and then carefully pieced together to become one fraudulently altered ticket using the top half of one of the actual tickets and the bottom half of the other,’ stated the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office in a report.
‘That fraudulently altered ticket now visually shows that it is a $1million prize winner.’
Enders is accused of driving to the Florida Lottery’s office in Pensacola on March 1 and submitting an official claim form for a $1million payment.
Six days later, Enders apparently called the lottery to check on the status of their claim and spoke to Special Agent Richard Pisanti, according to the Pensacola News Journal.
Pisanti told Enders to meet him days later to go over paperwork.
When Jones and Enders met with Pisanti on March 11, they were detained immediately and separated pending an investigation.
In her interview, Enders claimed that she scratched the ticket herself and thought it was worth $1million. She added that it would not scan at three stores so she took it to the lottery organization itself.
‘Enders stated that the ticket was in her car and it must have fallen out because when she found it the next day it had gotten rained on,’ stated the sheriff’s office’s report.
‘Enders stated that she tried to scratch the ticket before it was dry and it started falling apart so she taped it so it wouldn’t get more ruined than it already was.’
When Pisanti showed Enders that the words at the back of the combined tickets did not match, she replied, ‘What, they don’t go together?’
Enders also denied taping them together.
Meanwhile, Jones had a different story. He said he and Enders were walking in DeFuniak Springs when they saw half of a lottery ticket and wondered if it was a winning one. He claimed they saw the other half about 50 yards away and that they blow dried them because they were wet.
‘Jones stated that once scratched, the ticket said a million dollars and he was like, “No freaking way,”‘ stated the report.
He added that he did not purchase the ticket and ‘doesn’t know what Enders told us but that’s the truth’.
When Pisanti brought up that numbers on each ticket piece did not match, Jones seemed to know about it.
‘I began to state, “So she obviously knew…” and Jones stated, “Yeah, she knew, man,”‘ stated the report.
But then Jones seemed to change his story and say that they believed the ticket was real.
The couple were arrested and charged with forging a lottery ticket with the intention of defrauding, presenting a forged lottery ticket, and grand theft of $100,000 or more. The forgery counts carry at least five years in prison upon conviction, but the grand theft is up to 30 years in state prison, meaning they could spend up to 40 years behind bars if convicted.
Jones is slated to be arraigned on May 10, and Enders’ court date was not immediately set.
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