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She altered lottery tickets and kept the winnings
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She altered lottery tickets and kept the winnings
When a Florida Lottery vendor noticed “micro-scratches” on $50 and $10 scratch-off tickets for sale at a convenience store last June, the discovery led investigators to a cashier clerk arrested in a scheme to steal winning tickets and pocket the cash.Get more news about custom lottery tickets,you can vist our website!
That’s according to a criminal investigation launched June 14, 2022 by special agents with the Florida Department of Lottery into Christine Nicole Fenton-Gilbert, 39, who was formerly employed at the Rebel Store in Jensen Beach.
In court Monday, Fenton-Gilbert was ordered to 18 months in prison on charges related to altering more than a dozen scratch-off Florida Lottery tickets, including one worth $20,000 that she admitted buying because she knew it was a winner.
Circuit Judge William Roby found Fenton-Gilbert guilty of 16 counts of forging lottery tickets and imposed a prison term of 18 months on each count, all to be served at the same time.Roby also ordered her to serve 13 years of probation for one count of grand theft and to pay $20,000 to the Florida Lottery and $1,196 to the Rebel Store in restitution.Fenton-Gilbert had faced a maximum term of 95 years in prison before she struck a deal with the state on Feb. 9, requiring she plead no contest to 17 felonies. Prosecutors then dropped one count of organized fraud, records show.
Fenton-Gilbert said nothing before she surrendered to deputies. She had been free in lieu of $115,000 bond, according to court filings.After court, Assistant State Attorney David Lustgarten called Fenton-Gilbert’s sentence “a fair resolution” and said the plea terms noted how she cooperated with law enforcement and had little criminal history.
“The plea deal involved a sentence which was more than the minimum,” Lustgarten said. “In a nutshell, she's going to prison on her first felonies and that doesn't happen too often.”