Mississippi busts scammers who glued winning lottery ticket

Mississippi’s new state lottery isn’t yet a couple months old and already some hopeless scammers have been caught trying to game the system.

On Monday, the Mississippi Lottery Corp (MLC) announced that two local residents had been arrested after trying to pass off an altered scratch-ticket they claimed was a $100k winner. The pair reportedly showed up at the MLC’s head office in Flowood seeking to redeem their one ticket to paradise, but lottery officials immediately smelled a rat.

Local media quoted MLC spokesperson Meg Annison saying officials quickly concluded that the ticket had been altered by gluing on numbers indicating a $100k winner. Police were called, and Columbus residents Odis Latham and Russell Sparks were arrested shortly thereafter and charged with conspiracy to commit a felony and uttering a counterfeit instrument over $1k, leaving them looking at a potential 20-year prison sentence.

The MLC only began offering numeric draw games and scratch-off tickets in late-November, following the 2018 passage of legislation that finally cancelled Mississippi’s membership in the shrinking club of non-lottery US states. That club now has a mere five members: Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Nevada and Utah.