Florida Walmart employee arrested after winning lottery ticket allegedly stolen – National
A Florida Walmart employee is facing felony charges after allegedly stealing a customer’s winning lottery ticket, according to the Volusia Sheriff’s Office.
Tameka Hall, 40, faces a felony charge of grand theft of property valued between US$750 and $5,000, according to an arrest affidavit, viewed by NBC News, the Daytona Beach News-Journal and ABC News.
According to police, the incident took place at the Walmart in DeLand on June 14 when a customer went to cash in a ticket that had won him $2,700.
Global News has reached out to the Volusia Sheriff’s Office for further comment, but has not received a response.
Hall reportedly told the customer that the prize amount was too much for the store to provide and gave him a receipt with directions for where to collect the winnings.
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Instead of returning the winning lottery ticket to the customer, which is necessary for collecting the prize, Hall allegedly folded the ticket and placed it in the pocket of her uniform vest, according to the affidavit.
When the man realized he no longer had the ticket, he reportedly returned to Walmart but the missing ticket couldn’t be found.
The store manager reported seeing Hall put the ticket in her pocket on security video after she handed the customer the instructions to collect his winnings, NBC News reports.
Hall reportedly left work for the day and never returned the customer’s ticket.
When police spoke to Hall the next day, she reportedly told officers she had been planning to return the ticket to a manager, according to the affidavit.
Hall reportedly said she was not aware the customer would need the winning ticket to obtain his earnings.
She claimed that she put the ticket in her pocket because another customer arrived at the lottery counter after the man left.
After speaking with police, Hall led officers to her car, where the ticket was inside.
Hall was arrested and transported to the Volusia County Branch Jail, where she was released on a $2,500 bond, according to the Division of Corrections.
This isn’t the first time a store clerk has been arrested for stealing a winning lottery ticket.
In July 2024, a Tennessee store clerk allegedly stole a customer’s winning lottery ticket, threw it away and later fished it out of the trash and tried to claim the winnings as his own.
Meer Patel was charged with theft over $250,000, according to the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office.
According to a police news release, the real winner bought two winning Diamond and Gold scratch-off tickets worth $20 each at a Murfreesboro, Tenn., gas station. To save time, instead of scratching off the games on the tickets, he only scratched the bar codes and asked Patel to check if they were winners.
One of the tickets had a winning prize of $40, which Patel handed to the winner, police say. But the other ticket, which had a whopping $1-million prize, he dropped into the garbage can and told the customer it wasn’t a winner.
Store video obtained by investigators at the Tennessee Lottery showed Patel scanning the tickets and dropping one into the trash. However, later on, the footage allegedly shows Patel fishing the ticket out of the garbage and putting it in his pocket.
—With files from Global News
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