A 35 year old man will find it hard to do scratch off tickets now that he's wearing handcuffs.
The California man tried to swap a losing ticket with his roommate's winning ticket. But when he went to cash in the ticket, he was arrested.
The roommate did violate the unwritten rule from experts about keeping your lottery winning quiet.
Lt. Chris Polen of the Vacaville Police Department, wrote a Facebook post about the story in which he said,
Back on December 20th, a Vacaville shopper went to the Lucky Grocery Store on Peabody Rd to purchase a $30 Scratcher Lottery Ticket with hopes of winning a little extra cash for the holidays. The ticket turned out to be a winner - and he thought it was worth $10,000.
He returned home and shared this wonderful news with his 2 roommates.
The next morning he went to the Lottery’s District Office in Sacramento to collect his winnings, but was told his ticket was not only, not a winner, but had been altered. He suspected one of his roommates must have stolen his winning ticket while he was sleeping and immediately reported the theft to the police department. The next day his suspicions were proven true when his 35-year-old roommate, Adul Saosongyang attempted to cash in the winning ticket at the Lottery’s Sacramento District Office. Adul was told his winning ticket was not worth $10,000 dollars, but was actually worth $10 million dollars!
At this point, the Lottery was unaware this ticket had been reported stolen and began their administrative investigation that is done on all winnings over $600. When the Lottery Investigator went to Lucky in Vacaville to obtain video surveillance footage of the original purchase they were told the ticket might be stolen. This is when the Lottery Investigator and a Vacaville PD Detective began comparing notes and working together on this theft investigation. They determined the roommate had purchased a similar Scratcher Lottery Ticket, altered it, and swapped it with the winning ticket.
On Monday, January 7th, the Lottery Investigator invited Adul to the Lottery’s Sacramento District Office to collect his winnings, but instead of him celebrating his big win he was arrested by Vacaville PD Detectives who had obtained an arrest warrant for him for Grand Theft. He was booked into Sacramento County Jail and will be transferred to the Solano County Jail later this week.